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Writing Prompts, Poetry Forms, News and Book Reviews
Rather than a gift of darkness, describe joyful, life-affirming gifts, the gentle ones Rachel McKibbens recommends. For sample poets or poems just for pleaseure, read “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee and read the poems “Minneapolipstick” and an “Untitled” by the inspiring Rachel McKibbens.
I can no longer remember at which beach I took this picture, but I remember the happiness of the moment. It lingers, a warmth in my palm.
I was saddened to hear of Mary Oliver’s passing. While she was sometimes dismissed in academic circles, her poetry touched so many—perhaps it was her accessibility led that to her dismissal as “serious poetry” by some. Regardless, I believe she has much to teach and to admire.
For this first prompt, please notice how much Oliver is able to say in such a short poem. Limit yourself to five lines to say what legacy you will leave others. This could be a list or one single image.
For a second prompt, what is the poem of a dream? Write from a single dream or a compilation of dreams? How does time function in this poem, similar or opposed to the dream(s)? is there a color that tinges the entire dream/poem. Describe the color but do not name it. What feeling did the dream leave you with upon waking? Yearning, anguish, hope, solace? What feeling do you what the poem to convey?
For a third prompt, answer whether you kept the “box of darkness” Oliver writes of. If not, where did you leave it? Did it you pass it on? If so, to whom? If you kept it, where is box now? What has this gift provided you?
Below is a photo of Mary Oliver provided with an article in Slate.
For this prompt, take statistical terms and apply them to your daily life, nature or your immediate surroundings, or a seemingly unrelated topic. Make a scientific study of the statistical probability of having all the necessary ingredients for a recipe two weeks after a divorce, the inverse correlation between expertise and confidence in discussing a subject on Twitter, and the causal relationship between the skin color and gender of congressional member and resulting media attention—as measured in number of articles, tweets, editorial op ed’s, and TV rants by pundits—on a high school nickname or use of profanity.
Or avoid politics. Use the Overton window to explain your mother’s comfort in showing your nude baby photos to your acquaintenances or Poe’s law to justify your dating experiences. Plot your levels of anxiety and escapism. Make a bar graph of excuses to cancel social interactions. Cite your sources.
For inspiration, read “Exploded View” by Heather June Gibbons in Her Mouth as Souvenir (pasted at the bottom of this post) or in its original version entitled “Diagram.” I sincerely recommend buying her book. Amazing. Click here to buy from the publisher. It is also available at Amazon and other retailers.
And here is the poem—so fantastic. I am grateful I was able to hear her read it and other poems from her book last Wednesday. And so glad I bought Her Mouth as Souvenir!
OMG, I love the “red telephone and a black telephone”!
Mermaids, monsters, 50-ft. women, oh, my! Join us at 8 p.m. at the Ugly Mug in Orange for your favorite creature feature and Moon Tide’s publisher Eric Morago whom I blackmail into publishing me because I keep his darkest secret in an empty Kleenex box on my bedside table. I haven’t ever seen it—it is a dark secret and avoids the light, duh—but I feed it pumpkin seeds, so I know it is still there. Buy the book and free his secret or his soul—both probably cost the same.
And now for the first prompt: write a poem or story about taking a mermaid for a lover or an enemy. For inspiration, read Jan Stinchcomb’s “The Lorelei Project.” Just remember, not all hearts beat warm.
(This is the mermaid I created out of rocks, seaweed, and shells a few years ago.)
And here is a picture of me looking very intense (or my attempt at frightening at the Dark Ink anthology launch:
(Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher)
And here is my mermaid poem in the anthology...but you have to buy the book to read the ending of “Mermaid: The Ending.”
Thank you, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, for the photo and for the plug on Twitter!
I love this poem by Lucille Clifton (along with so many other of hers), so to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another, use the opening line “i am running into a new year” as a ghostline. As an added constraint, include three other ages or years. Which years or your previous selves were the hardest to leave behind? Which are the hardest to run into again or the hardest you run away from?
For the last day of 2018—a hard year for so many as we have watched a slow falling into night—spend a moment to remember all the moments that brought you here under the blinking sky, the births and breaths and birdsong. Write a poem to honor what beauty has passed and what beauty remains. Try to use anaphora and alliteration. For inspiration, read Joy Harjo’s poem “Remember.”
Last year I came up with my own prompts for the holiday; this year, just a big nope. My brain this holiday season is the blankest page in a notebook, not even lined. So here is a list of writing prompts for both poetry and fiction from Litbridge.
And here is a bizarre short story that I loved from Greg Van Eekhout and found today on Twitter. Again, Twitter (in spite of all of my griping about Nazis, incels and bots (oh, my!) is a blessing. How could I not click on the link with that description...
Volcanoes, lightning strikes, and tsunamis—what natural disaster best describes your “o” moment? Or perhaps what fills your head as your body blinks its third eye at God’s coming light is a gentle rain after a long drought, a single ray of light grazing the center of a daisy, a spring bubbling in a forest, a wetlands sprouting lilies.
Maybe rather than images, you hear a choir belting out “Joy to the World,” a clarion call, a cascade of flutes, or a single harp string thrummed. Describe the song, the words and instruments if any, the tone and the register. God loves a song of praise. Sing it out.
Or possibly all of your boxes on the to-do list of your body get checked in black marker and every item on your pull-down menu is selected.
Choose your metaphor and ride it all the way through until you’re done and done.
For inspiration, read these two poems by Danez Smith: “King the Color of Space, Tower of Molasses & Marrow” and “Bare.”
Today’s prompt is meta or incestuous, whichever scares you the most. This poem (perhaps) came from one of my prompts (or rather a challenge) back in June, and now the prompt is title your poem “Obligatory ____ Poem” and use the following six words from Sarah’s poem: name, living, head, hiss, kindling, mirror. Try to change the usage of the words from verb to noun and vice versa or feel free to binge on gerunds like potato chips and piss off writing instructors everywhere.
Btw, to read the rest of Sarah’s poem, you have to buy the book!!!! Muhahahahahahahah. Here’s the link!
And here is that sweet face housing the diabolical mind that makes Ian’s friends worry about his incipient demise involving pogo sticks, an inflatable baby pool filled with electric eels, and a banana peel.
So I am pretty tired, and no prompts (or anything else productive) is happening in my brain. The hamster wheel has rusted still and quiet. So, time to find Twitter prompts! Blessed, blessed poets posting prompts...
Photo chosen because I love this children’s book and because the mouse is me, my brain, and my current level of ambition all holding a flower.
We are losing species and whole populations at a horrifying rate: even insects are disappearing and the next age . Perhaps this reason is why of all the amazing poems in Emma Bolden’s House Is an Enigma, her “Between Sea and Sky” is the one I needed to share. This poem “animals” the world and the universe, perhaps a necessity one day.
For this prompt, do the same. Rather than peopling this planet, refill it with wild creatures, species of all kinds. If we lose the bees, let them hum in dandelion and cracked sidewalk. Let each grain of sand embody an ant that once tunneled teeming cities. See the glitter of a dragonfly in glass shards and hear the soft cooing of a dove in morning drizzle. Make an interstate a river of leaping salmon, the exhaust the heavy breathing of a predator. If the oceans mirror the void between stars, turn every desolate wave into fin and feather. Let the stars hiss back at us, we who sought to grasp what was out of reach and let go of what could be sheltered within our palms.
“Between Sea and Sky” was originally published as “Melancholy Between Sea and Sky” in Escape into Life. And, please, buy the book. House Is an Enigma is beautiful and aching.
This post is a month overdue...I had technical issues with some of the photos, so I had to scrap my initial plan and instead individually feature poets from the Dark Ink anthology launch.
First of all, I want to start with Adrian Ernesto Cepeda. I was so stoked getting to meet him in person at the Dark Ink launch after following him on Twitter for so long. And his poem was fantastic! Buy the anthology from Moon Tide Press, so that you can read it and all the other fantastic poems!
Full disclosure: I stole this photo from his post on Facebook. Below is a selfie of the two of us.
And look down here for some members of the audience!
Hi all, another attempt to use one poet’s genius to birth more geniuses—a genesis if you will—Sorry! So here goes.
For the first prompt, use four or more words (or all) from the following list found in Kaveh Akbar’s poem “When Lighting Split the Plum Tree” (published in the Georgia Review): “plum,” “starched,” “glory,” “liquids,” “skin,” “coos,” “feature,” “omnipotent,” “hexagons,” 8s”, “natural, “rearranges,” dignity,” “whittled,” “universival,” and “body.”
Or second choice, write a poem in which you make a poem using words from eight (or fewer) categories: insect, animal, fruit, number, geometrical shape, crafting/woodworking/smithing, profession/job, body part/organ. Tip: write a list of 3-5 words for each category you plan to use and mix and match until you spark something.
Third prompt: what is the soul made of? Give percentages of its chemical composition. Covalent or ionic bonds? Explain death using isotopes.
Fourth prompt: use the ghostline “it’s a feature not a flaw but if.”
Fifth prompt: describe what you would say to an omnipotent audience? Anything more than “sorry” or perhaps a long rant about how the stars shifted too much to guide even a dream.
Sixth prompt: just write a fucking sex poem. You know this is what you wanted all along. Use the words “smelled,” “excited,” “skin,” “stretch,” “built,” and “tongue.” Bonus points for including “wooing’ and “coos.’
Seventh prompt: take the poem and erase it down to the point you want your body to make after your death. Or the phrase you believe it has echoed throughout your life.
Eighth prompt (exercise idea from Brendan Constantine): take the poem, line-by-line exchange words with opposites: “inside” becomes “outside”; “boiling” becomes “freezing”; “dignity” becomes “shame”;
“died” becomes “lived”; and so on. Perhaps create a system—like exchanging all/most of the nouns or most/all of the verbs. See where this takes you.
Make a list of five rooms, HVAC units, appliances, and/or storage areas. Think kitchen, furnace, nursery, basement, roof, chimney, patio, closet, furnace, etc. Next make a list of five organs, systems, or areas of the body. Look at the lists. What sparks for you? Write a poem that names a room or appliance or building and associate with your body or another’s. What is stored there—kept but hidden—what is used daily. What memory or loved one do you display in the curve of cheek, the crook of your elbow, the fluttering of your lungs? What lies in the depths of your bowels. What burns deep in your furnace? What voice pulses in your wrist? What song does your breath croon as you close your eyes for sleep?
This prompt was inspired by Laura Kasischke’s “Song” found in her book in Space in Chains. Or as the Ugly Mug crew would say: my attempt to reverse engineer her poem. Alas, I am not the technician that Steve Ramirez is. Check out Kasischke’s similarly beautiful poem “Kitchen Song” and (as always) buy her book! Thank you, Danielle Mitchell, for recommending this poet to me.
The book....and she has others of course.
Sometimes what we love, breaks open our foundation, and the beauty is in what remains.
As you probably know, I adore Chen Chen and have posted prompts from him before. He is such a joy! [And, as always, buy his amazing book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities and visit his website for poems and general awesomeness.]
So your prompt from Chen Chen is to write a poem about that moment in which you felt loved and use “peppery” somewhere in a line. By the time, I read the prompt, a poet had already written the perfect sample poem. Yay! With her permission, I posted her poem below:
You can follow @fullofgems on Twitter and, for more poems, follow writerchristiana on Instagram. Please do.
Best wishes writing!
Join ussssss for a sometimes scary (but not necessarily scary) reading of poems from Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired from Horror published by Moon Tide Press. Horror fans (and pansies like myself) will be sure to enjoy a night of poems about favorite slasher films, mythological creatures, classic monsters, current politics (the most frightening subject of all), and more.
Directly from Moon Tide’s editor, Eric Morago (because I am lazy, as you know): We hope you will join us for the official launch reading and party of Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror on Saturday, November 3rd at The Whittier Museum in Whittier, CA.
Poets from the anthology will be reading and you will have an opportunity to purchase the book, along with other Moon Tide titles. There will be complimentary food and drink (including wine), a fun raffle, and other spooky surprises.
The event will start at 7 PM, but arrive a little early to get your copy of the book, a treat, and to check out the museum's awesome Halloween decorations.
Poets reading the night of the event are TBA, but some of the confirmed poets are: Ron Koertge, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Armine Iknadossian, Daniel McGinn, Sonia Greenfield, and Mariano Zaro.
We will update the full list of poets as the date draws closer. You can stay up to date by checking the Facebook event page here.
The Whittier Museum is located at: 6755 Newlin Ave. Whittier, CA 90601.
We are SO proud of this anthology and cannot wait to share it with you. Please mark your calendars; we hope you will join us in celebrating this book and the poets who make it so special!
And don't forget...this reading is absolutely FREE and open to the public.
The symbolism of flowers has a long history. Victorians spoke in the language of flowers—each flower had its own meaning and shades of meaning. Shakespearean audiences also picked up on a floral insults. After her father’s death, Ophelia passes out flowers to King and Queen. She hands the King columbine for faithlessness, deceit and adultery. For Queen Gertrude, she gives rue for regret and, again, adultery. Rue also was used to induce miscarriage. Since Hamlet had killed Ophelia’s father, Ophelia may have added an additional insult with the rue. After posting this last night, I came across this poem by Jenny Molberg, “In Which Ophelia Opens the Box of Hamlet’s Drawings.” Love it!
For this prompt, design a bouquet for your ex, a frenemy, or an outright enemy. Read Camille T. Dungy’s “Daisy Cutter” as a guide. If you wish, use this chart that discuses the flowers in Hamlet to learn about flower meanings. Feel free to add well-known poisonous plants and flowers to your bouquet. Or, if you prefer, create your own meanings with your flower choices. White carnation, for me, symbolizes early death, mourning and loss of hope.
If you are a kinder person than I am, create a bouquet for a loved one. Again fee free to use the chart or other list or create your own associations. For poems on flowers and their meanings, read Kaveh Akbar’s “Orchilds are Sprouting From the Floorboards,” Cynthia Zarin’s “Flowers” (this poem about a bouquet given to her), Nate Marshall’s “picking flowers,” and Cindy Veach’s “Rose of Jericho.”
In his most recent collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Terence Hayes asks this question as the ending of one of the poems: “Would you rather spend the rest of eternity / With your wild wings bewildering a cage or / With your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt?” Listen to him read the whole poem “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [‘Inside me is a black-eyed animal]’” published by the Poetry Foundation.
Read Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” for their answers. Read Cecilia Llompart’s “Do Not Speak of the Dead” for a different response, and James Dickey’s “The Dusk of Horses” for another.
If you cannot answer the question Hayes asks, use his first line “Inside me is a black-eyes animal” as a ghost line. Let us see what emerges from you.
Years later, I am still in love with Jamaal May’s Hum, and some of my favorite poems in the collection are poems about phobias. One such poem is “Athazagoraphobia (Fear of Being Ignored)”—notice the imagery. Read “Mechanophobia: Fear of Machines” if you would like to read more of his poetry. And, as always, buy the book!
For your prompt, choose a phobia, name it and define it in the title and write about it using a list of concrete descriptions. Here is an online list of phobias. Or make up a phobia. Be surreal or realistic. Be detailed and visceral. Be spectacular.
Where do you pray? On what surface (or any) do you bend your knee? When you think of religion, do you picture your church down the street, the temple of your childhood, your prayer mat, or any light shining through stained glass? Or is it a wide blue sky streaked with wings, a stream tricking through a hushed and heavy wooded green, or is it the sea? Somehow when I read Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Sea Church,” I think of pillars of salt and a coral arch and a waiting. For more peoms by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, please check out her website.
For this prompt, write a poem about the church of your creation and build it out of what you most want to taste and to touch. Let it be the promise you whispered to yourself deep in a night when you didn’t want to see dawn. What would come to answer your prayer in this church? And what would you pray for first—mercy, forgiveness, peace, justice, or just a slower shattering of light?
