As always, Chen Chen shares amazing poems, and Layli Long Soldier is a wonderful poet, whom I need to read more of.

The first prompt involves two parts. The first is a Mad Libs writing exercise in which you keep the format of the original (including the shape and the spacing), substitute “grief” with another emotion (try for a positive emotion first) and replace all the verbs with your own. Next replace the “we” to another pronoun (“I” or “you”). For the second part, remove the last lines from the original (“into light as ash / across our faces”) and rearrange what you’ve written into stanzas (couplets, quatrains or whichever feels the most natural to you). Provide your own ending. See what happens.

The next prompt is to write your own poem using ten of the verbs from this poem. For a constraint, use nature imagery.

The third prompt is a like a Choose Your Own Adventure. For each line, choose one of the options (e.g. “As we / (embrace) / the (past) / we (begin) / to (accept) / the grief / we (shift) / into light as ash / across our faces”) and make this a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.

Bonus prompt: What emotion or event has carved your own path (or that of a character’s in planning a short story or longer piece of fiction).

Good luck writing! Have fun!