Seasonal greetings! And if you haven't done so already, why not check out our poetry advent calendar on Instagram?  We are at day 13 after having got off to a great start. It is proving a great opportunity to share some of the many poems written by the poets on our blog pages this year. Some of our bloggers have already responded to our challenge to write a reverse-word nonet. So if you haven't had a chance yet there is still time .....

To inject a bit of fun, thought and reflection into the final dark and gloomy days of the year we decided to put up one Instagram post a day, starting on the first day in December, drawing from our news articles, contributions from our bloggers, monthly Write Out Loud groups and previous Write Out Loud anthologies and competitions, with a few surprises along the way.

If you want like to get involved, we are also challenging people to write a reverse-word nonet, looking quite like a Christmas tree, and will be posting selected ones on our poetry advent calendar. We featured nonets as a poetry form earlier this year.  

Our theme? We don’t want to set too many rules, and we can’t ignore what’s happening in the world out there – nor would we want to. But we’re looking for light and shade, and please, no tub-thumping political poems - such poems rarely stand the test of time.

 A reverse-word nonet has nine lines, starting with one syllable in the first line, and descending to nine syllables in the final line. The end product looks quite like a Christmas tree!

You can post your nonets on the Write Out Loud blogs. We will be sure to spot them!

We look forward to reading your contributions. And check out our Instagram page to see what's been posted so far! 

You can find Write Out Loud's posts on Instagram here