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Writing Prompts, Poetry Forms, News and Book Reviews
What if inside each of us is a little girl wandering through a forest, an old woman waiting, a woodcutter sharpening an ax, the forest itself growing and dying and growing, a big bad wolf seeking to eat the young and tender and the aged and wise, and an ax swinging.
Write a poem or short story about what grows inside of you or another, remaining hidden and trapped, and what else cuts its way out into the world.
As you probably noticed, it has been weeks since I posted anything. Partly this is due stressing myself out because I promised to promote friends’ work—I often perform best when I care the least. Mostly though, I am not writing or even reading. I simply did not have any creativity or motivation. These days feel as if I am eating Saltines in the Sahara—dry, very dry.
Last night’s virtual reading helped—thank you, Eric Morago for Shout—I once again experienced the shiver from hearing a powerful poem. I even managed to write a (bad) poem this morning. This coming week, I will being posting regularly again. But baby steps. So here is a stolen Twitter prompt:
Write a poem or short story using the generator.
You will of course want to expand the poem and give credit to the generator if you wish to publish what you’ve written.
Below is a bonus ekphrastic prompt:
Today is just too hard of a day to think of anything to write or pretend that this country is just and good, so I want to share these powerful poems by Rita Dove, Karisma Price, and Danez Smith.
I am in awe of the artistry and the beauty—as well I should be for a former U.S. poet laureate, but even within that exalted level, there are distinctions. Here is a link to more of Rita Dove’s poetry published online by the American Academy of Poets.
Below is Karisma Price’s breathtaking poem. Here is the poet’s website if you would like to read more.
With board games, puzzles and almost indoor entertainment backordered, let’s follow the example of Kelli Russell and Melissa Studdard and create our own games in this time of isolation and panic.
Create your own version of traditional games—gather duplicate photos of your friends for a game of Memory or use birthday cards, holiday cards, and invitations as a personalized deck of cards for Solitaire. Print out photos of flowers and landscape or crowded city streets from your last trip or group selfies from meeting with friends for coffee or drinks or going out to the movies and then cut puzzle pieces out of all of them and mix them up. Try to put your world back together.
Play the game you have made and write about the experience. Did you win?
Bonus prompt: choose one of the poem’s Bingo spaces that you have recently landed on and write about it. Remember to go easy on yourself. Let yourself win this round.
Unlike me, many of you probably completed the 30 poems in a 30 days challenge. That is awesome! Now for even more fun: editing those poems! Below is a Twitter discussion that I found really intriguing. The original conversation began as quirky ways people approach reaching poems and novels, but then poet Julia Beach explained why she first reads The last three words of the fourth line from the bottom in other people’s poems and in her own as the poem’s key.
Take one of the poems you’ve written recently, or perhaps one that has never really come together, and try seeing if this “map” helps you cut and expand the rest of the poem to fit that vision.
Here is the prompt: use this same reading process of using the last three words of the fourth line from the bottom of a poem and use them as your opening line and build a poem from there. See where you end up. You can then choose to erase those three words so that they function as a ghostline or you can keep them, using italics or quotation marks. Either way, be sure to give the poet credit.
Bonus prompt: what does this tree remind you of? A key, a warning, the devil’s spork? Write a poem or story about coming across this tree in an abruptly silent forest. What does it mean?
Today was a hard day. Many people cannot see their mothers due to the risk of spreading the virus or because of distance (and restrictions on travel) or by loss. I am sorry. It is hard to be away from loved ones and harder still when we can never see them again. And it is difficult for people who had to cut family ties for their self-preservation or whose continued meetings with family bring more pain than joy.
For the first prompt, write a poem about a moment in time when you and your mom seemed to completely understand one another. Try to create a conversation between the two using the contrapuntal form (discussed in a previous blog post).
Or perhaps nothing was said, but your eyes met or you reacted the same way simultaneously. If so, describe the setting. Use inclusive language as if even the furniture and pictures on the wall and the TV show playing in your home were all part of this moment with the two of you. Or if outside, bring the breeze, the humming of insects, the smell of grass into the experience.
If you have never shared a happy moment of understanding with a mother, write about that moment you did have with someone else. Family can be by blood or by choice. Celebrate a loved one.
Here is a lovely poem by Ada Limón that can be your inspiration.
For the next prompt, write a poem using the following words from “The Raincoat”: “brace,” “work,” “unspooled,” “unclouded,” “drive,” “unfettered,” “home,” “solid,” “give,” and “whole.”
For the last prompt, start a poem using “I never asked” from “The Raincoat” and go from there. As always, give credit to the author.
Let’s celebrate all things geeky: Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, RPGs, anime, monsters, Marvel and more (and, no, this list is NOT complete)!
For the first prompt, make a list of characters from well-known superhero, sci if, and fantasy franchises (could be from books, comic books, movies, TV shows, anything). Now make a second list of characters from those or other well-known series (worlds). Lastly, mix them up. Put Legolas in Star Trek’s infamous red shirt and discover if he can glide his way out of Phaser range, have Poison Ivy take Herbology at Hogwarts, throw Link into let a Cylon become the next Slayer. Go wild.
Or Mary Sue yourself into the world you have always wanted to join. Choose your own adventure and explore this world you have so long loved. You can be the hero.
Or write about your favorite monster or perhaps just the monster of the week. For inspiration, listen to poet Heidi Denkers read Adrian Ernesto Cepeda’s “ (available at Moon Tide Press) and her own Godzilla poem. Enjoy!
Yes, poetry is a trap—it is the quicksand so ubiquitous in 80s cartoons that will suck you down—but you may make a new friend…
Good luck!
From the Peabody Essex museum, Salem, MA
Many of you are organized, industrious souls who have one or perhaps two poems left to write to reach the 30-poem challenge. For you, your prompt is to write a poem listing all of your achievements—small or large—and just take the time to be proud of yourself.
For the rest of us, let’s save that prompt for the last poem and keep going until we reach 30 poems. Perhaps that will be mid-May or longer. No matter. We will get there when we do and celebrate just as much.
Here is the day 30’s prompt from NaPoWriMo just to keep us motivated:
For the links posted on this page, click on the NaPoWriMo link above this screenshot. And do check out previous prompts at the organization’s website—you are sure to find one you really like
We all feel alone at times—as if the words we speak fall to the ground the moment they leave our lips or the gestures and signs we make always seem unseen in a dark cloud surrounding us. Some days we feel as if the language we use is understood by no one else in the world, and we will spend our days and the years in solitary wandering.
A whale whose song is at a frequency heard by no other whales was first discovered in 1989 and has remained alone ever since. Listen to narrator of this YouTube video wonder if the whale finds his existence one of welcome solitude or aching isolation. Btw, I found this video on Facebook, shared by Tresha Faye Haefner and Robbi Nester.
For your prompt, write a monologue from the whale.
Bonus prompt: answer the whale’s call. What would you sing in reply?
So I normally think of our government agencies as stodgy, and then I discovered the Twitter account of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission…and my world upended.
The first prompt is an ekphrastic challenge. Write what you see. Include some interpretation if you prefer. Best wishes.
For the second prompt, write a monologue from the person/anthropomorphic cat/unknowable entity in charge of this Twitter account. Or if that is too difficult, write a poem simply describing the cubicle and desk of this person/fox-knight kitty/alien creature.
Btw, you too can follow @USCPSC on Twitter.
Bonus prompt: describe hanging out with your Enchanted Scorpion. What movies do the two of you binge?
Please do one of these prompts and share. Would LOVE to read your poem!
Good luck!
These next prompts are inspired by Laura Eve Engel’s “My New Grief,” shared by Sam Sax. For the first prompt, use the first line of the poem “If there is new grief” as a ghostline. Don’t forget to erase the line after you’ve finished the poem (does that ever happen?) and give credit to the poet.
For the next prompt, make a list of griefs or fears. Which is the newest? Write a poem in which the new grief or sorrow meets your old, familiar worries/sorrows for drinks or for coffee. What do they talk about? Which one dominates the conversation? Which others give away and listen respectfully? Who pays the bill; do they divide it equally? Which tips the most? Which leaves first?
For the last prompt, make a list of things you did not do. Use “like it’s something I own” as your title.
For this prompt, choose one of the following as your haven during this pandemic. Make even the house’s drawback a benefit—the bedbugs sing lullabies to you at night, the ghosts help you find your phone and your slippers, the ass is an excellent cook, and you enjoy freedom from news and animal requests.
Bonus prompt: Make one of the quarantine houses your setting for a short story. Create characters (between 3-5) and have them interact under stress.
I received some sad news. So the prompt for tonight is this: write a poem for a family member to let that person know how much you love them. That is all we can do.
I wish you and everyone you love life without sickness or ending or pain.
Take a famous quote and muff it all up. Let that be the first line of your poem, or make it a ghostline and erase it afterwards. Here are some examples from Twitter—from where I usually steal things.
Here are some more suggestions:
“Nattering Nabobs of Negativism” is brought to you by the letter “N”! Give it up everyone for the Spiro Agnew, man who really put the ass in assonance.
“I am not not a crook”
“I know Jack.” You know jackshit. [You’re no Jack Kennedy]
“Speak softly and carry a big stick and sail a motherfucking fleet right up in there.” Or drive a really big truck. Same thing.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Or that one. Or that one. Yep, maybe that one. No, no, the other one.
And another stolen idea from Twitter:
And if the prompt above doesn’t spark anything, here is another stolen-Twitter prompt: write a poem with “Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts” as the title. Or write a poem explaining what boomsday prepper is.
And for the final bonus prompt: write a poem answering this question but specifically addressing the explanation to this particular cat. Like WTH is up with that cat.
Good luck!
So we’re deep into 30/30, and we’ve been writing diligently and the words are scattering like ants in a mowed over mound, or you are so behind that you need to add another civilization’s calendar to catch up. Either way, short poems can save the hour, the month, or the decade…
For this prompt, think about what you have recently learned from isolation, the pandemic, parenting, capitalization. What has surprised you, disappointed, or inspired you?
Write a haiku or tanka (traditional or modified) using the following as the first line (or altered for syllable count if you wish to follow the 5-7-5 or 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure):
________ taught me
Go from there.
For the second prompt, write a poem about a short poetic form’s structure using that form. Perhaps the best sample poem ever written was by this 5th grader:
You (we) can do this! Pebbles believes in us.
Good luck! Head scratches for all!
Today is Earth Day, so time to write odes or any other praise poem for the Earth. Write to your mother. She cradled you into this life and will carry your ashes into the next eon.
Of course William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” is a famous example. For more inspiration, read W. Todd Kaneko’s “Where the Sky Meets the Earth.”
But like any mother, the Earth was a lover first. Flirt a little. Write her a sex poem. The photo below may provide you the impetus.
And here is the origin of Earth Day because we all need creation stories. For a final prompt, write your own origin story. Make yourself a planet. What lives within you, orbits you moonlike, and holds you in place?
Good luck!
We have all had insults flung at us, suffered bruised pride and emotional scars, but hid the pain. Remember though, we survived. That is cause for celebration, for a salute to ourselves in the mirror, for our own Roman triumph down the sidewalks of our dusty old hometown.
Wear that thick scar tissue as if it were the skins of our enemies, carry every day forward as if it were the severed head of the playground bully who pulled up our skirts or pushed us down in the mud. We have earned this stiff-necked, limping parade, and we will beat our own drumming hearts through this day and the next and the next.
For this prompt, take an insult that burned you, but make it the light that guided you through the dark. For inspiration, read or listen to “Lisp” by Sam Sax.
You’ve got this.
One of my favorite poetry forms is the cento, which is composed of lines from other poems or pieces of writing. Click here for a description of the form’s origin as well as sample poems provided by the American Academy of Poets.
One reason I like the cento so much is that I practiced it in a Poetry Lab workshop guest hosted by Natalie J. Graham whose writing and teaching style I so admire. In the workshop, each of us drew a number that determined the page from which we selected the line from the stack of books passed around.
Another reason the cento is a favorite of mine is that it works as an editing exercise, helping to develop surprising connections from disparate elements and forcing writers to cut and rearrange until lines fit together. In a subsequent workshop, I was amazed by how much each poet’s cento sounded like the poet even though all of the lines were written by others.
For this prompt, gather a stack of ten or so books. It is probably easier to use all poetry books for the first time, but you can include novels of any genre, collections of short stories, memoirs, or even textbooks if you wish. For these as well as for poems with longer lines, especially prose poems, you will need to cut the line down so that it fits with the other lines chosen.
Roll dice to determine the page number (try to choose a number that will generally fall between a table of contents and the acknowledgments). If one book is much shorter than the rest, choose the last page with a poem, and if a particular page is blank or only has a section heading, choose the next closest page containing a poem.
Make sure to record the poem (author and book too) so that this can be included for later publications. Some editors may want to verify that the lines come from multiple sources, and you should include this information in your own acknowledgments section.
Some poets create entire collections out of centos, often under one unifying theme. I haven’t been able to find an available copy Diana Arterian’s Death Centos, composed of people’s last words, but I absolutely loved Simone Muench’s Wolf Centos, especially the poem below:
This prompt is inspired by a photograph and story tweeted about two penguins. Write a poem from the point of view of one of the penguins.
That is all. Good luck.
Using tweet below as inspiration, write your own origin story. Make your creation glow rainbow bright, as neon-lit night or radioactive. Weave some truth to hold the tale together. Have fun!
Bonus prompt: If your own birth and history are already well documented by renowned historians or by relatives on Facebook, create an origin story for a well-known fictional character or historical person. Wrong answers earn extras credit.
