The presidential inauguration is less than a week away. But if you don’t have tickets to an inaugural ball or you’re not planning to be out there watching the swearing-in in Washington, don’t worry, we’ve still got a way for you to be part of the occasion.

We’re composing our own People's Poem for the presidential inauguration. Poet Kwame Dawes got us started with a first line:

Say 'nation.' In the way of quarrels, say 'hope.'

Now, we've been asking you to follow-up with second, third, fourth lines, and more. We’re collecting the answers on Twitter under the hashtag #prezpoem.

Willy Chyr, founder of Collabowriters, a website that’s crowd-sourcing a novel, shares his advice for curating a crowd-sourced story, and Patrik Henry Bass, books editor for Essence reflects on other recent crowd-sourcing literary experiments.