Last Week’s Prompts

If you are a week (or more) behind as I am, let’s just go back in the calendar and write a poem for then. Here are the prompts I intended to post:

Go back in time. Write a poem with big words. Make the dictionary proud. Or check out Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day for your prompt. Here are a couple of words that may get you started. Remember, using a word with “z” and “q” gets you the most points!

And for April 15th, write a sonnet to the IRS. Or perhaps history is more to your liking: Abraham Lincoln was shot on the 14th but died the next day. The sinking of the Titanic lasted from April 14-15th.

Don’t forget to write an ode to a librarian or a mushroom.

And, finally, I am sorry to have missed celebrating International Haiku Day. Write a haiku. Below are some famous examples. Check out this site for more.

Good luck with the 30/30 challenge! Looks like I will be writing 5 or more a day near the end of April….

Here is a weird fungus if you need some inspiration for mushroom day.

Food and Words to Live Upon—Prompts Inspired by Jacquelyn Bengfort

As always I am grateful for all the new poems and poets Twitter introduces me to. I too love Jacquelyn Bengfort‘s “Apple Sonnet” with its juxtaposition of sound and imagery, fruit and myth and craft.

For the first prompt, write a food poem that emphasizes its sensory associations as well as the sound of its name in the mouth. Try to include historical or mythical references.

For the second prompt, use the line “And I want to write you a poem like that:” as a ghostline. Remember to delete that line but still give credit to the poet.

For the third prompt, choose a word and compare its sound and meaning in two languages. How does the differing sound alter the feel of the word, its connotations? What remains unchanged?

The last prompt is a Mad Lib exercise and will likely create a poem too similar to the original for publication. Replace every concrete noun with another object, switch the verbs to their antonyms, and change all the similes to metaphors (delete the “like” in the comparisons). What happens?

For the last prompt, write a poem on a completely different topic from the following word list: “little,” “ruin,” “wearing,” “good,” “touch,” “winter,” “stains,” “want,” and “gone.”

Good luck with 30/30!

It is the Day of the Bunny—Prompts

It is the day of spring renewal, eggs full of candy, and headless chocolate bunnies…and the 4th day of 30/30. I am already behind, so let’s all get cracking (sorry!)

For the first prompt, rewrite the children’s rhyme “Little Bunny Foo Foo” as horror. Did Little Bunny Foo Foo keep all those heads he “bopped”? What did the Good Fairy really turn him into? Goon or just goo?

Or write about the basket of candy and chocolate, decorated eggs. My mother is diehard fan of the Easter Bunny, especially hiding baskets and eggs in a woods where they may or may not be found before the ants do. Or write about a particular Easter or another family or religious holiday. Timothy Liu’s “Love Poem” demonstrates that a chocolate bunny can be something other than sweet.

It’s 30/30, Poets! Get Your Write On!

April is the cruelest month—it’s National Poetry Month and the write-30-poems-in-30-days challenge! For every day of this month, write a poem. Be on the look out for great readings, workshops and other events too.

For more prompts and information, check out the NaPoWriMo site. The first prompt is already up!

Join me in writing (I hope) 30 poems this month. I will post extra prompts (not daily though—because I will barely make it through this month), but I provide links to other prompt sources.

Be a poetry-writing fool. Get started!

Emerge, Writer—A Prompt for the Equally Confused

Awards, grants, and publications are offered to emerging writers, but what do writers emerge from? Grammar lessons and emo music? Are writers hatched in MFA programs, transformed into soup before erupting out of cocoon and chrysalis, licked into form as bear cubs were once believed to be? Do writers emerge by writing themselves into the view of editors, judges, and publishers? Is it similar to a debutante’s introduction to society? Is there a secret curtsy?

How did you emerge as a writer? What is your origin story? What genre does it fit? Myth or rom com or horror? If a mystery, who died? Do you have a body and a villain in your creation story?

First of all though, have you emerged? When will you? What or who will tell you that you have? Is there a yardstick involved? Where do you go next?

Write a short story or poem answering any of these questions, or none. Make it up as you go.

Self-Correction—A Prompt Inspired by Caroline Bird

Somehow this poem that corrects itself—renames every person and switches verbs and even the conjunction—hooks me.

For the first prompt, write a declarative statement in the first line, and retract or change one word in that statement in each subsequent line until only one word remains from the original.

For the second prompt, use the poem’s last line for a ghostline and see where it takes you. Remember to erase the line and give the poet credit.

Poetry Prompts from Profiles—More Twitter Blessings

So I fell in love with the quote below, so much that I immediately followed the person and asked if I could use it for a prompt, so here we go.

For the first prompt, use the phrase “new liver, same eagles” as a ghostline. You probably don’t need to use “After My Sweet Baboo Redux or After @babsben unless you really want to.

For the next prompt, take a popular myth or fairytale and rewrite it in modern language or a very specific vernacular and setting, different from the original. Imagine Artemis being caught skinny-dipping on the first day of deer hunting season in Indiana, or the Princess and the Pea retold by a British tabloid.

For the final prompt, create a story or poem that embodies the mood of “new liver, same eagles” or make your own phrase that sums up the last year or, realistically, 2016 until probably 2022.

Bonus prompt: write an ekphrastic for this photo.

What You Must Do—Prompts Inspired by Li-Young Lee

“You Must Sing” is such a beautiful poem by Li-Young Lee that I had to share it and hope it will inspire other beautiful poems.

For the first prompt, keep the overall structure and theme, but change “sing” to another action. What must you do? What happens next? Do you want to be found?

Remember that this is an exercise. Make sure that if you wish to share the poem as your own that it is not simply a paraphrase of the original; it wouldn’t be yours then. The goal is to keep writing and learning, not only to create poems to publish and perform.

For the next prompt, use the line “Was death a guest?” for a ghostline, a first line that you erase after the poem’s complete. As always, give credit to the poet.

For the last prompt, create a metaphor that combine an abstract concept with a place as the poet did with time and a house: “All the day’s doors/are closed” and “those hours, that house.” Try to go beyond the usual ones: the underworld and death, crossroads and a life decision, etc. Or take the familiar and personalize it so that exploration is required.

In the Event of…

So I totally forgot to do a prompt for love poems last week….oops! No love for us.

Twitter is once again saving me from myself and providing great poems to use for prompts. Such a blessing.

For the first prompt, use the title of the poem “In the Event of My Death” by Katie Farris as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet for inspiration.

For the second prompt, write a poems using the following words: “rope,” “grows,” “solidarity,” “leaves,” “gather,” “plant,” “end,” “braid,” “net,” and “catch.”

Perhaps it is just a bizarre game my brain plays, but I find heart shapes and faces wherever I look. If you see the heart in this picture, write a poem describing what it once loved.

Moon Tide Press Indiegogo Campaign

Check out Moon Tide Press’s Indiegogo fundraiser for its upcoming anthology Sh!t Men Say to Me: A Poetry Anthology in Response to Toxic Masculinity for workshops, a one-on-one photo session, manuscript consultation, a mixtape, mystery bags, and more! Or just preorder it and enjoy!

You can purchase other great Moon Tide poetry collections here.

Polter-ghostline—A Twitter Prompt

For this prompt, I want you to use the following statement regarding events just 20 years ago as a ghostline:

“Should these people have known better? Probably. Is it ok to hold them to today’s standard? No.”

This statement had me wanting to throw lamps and start fires. Especially after he said he wasn’t condoning anyone’s actions… Let’s just burn it all down, or write a poem instead.

Prompt from Philip B. Williams

I meant to post this in December but misplaced it, so pretend it is either 2020 still or 2021 is ending already, either seems likely or never ending. Regardless, let someone know how you need to be loved.

What Is Left—Prompts

I found the photo and the accompanying explanation lovely.

Remember a time when you received a shock, a stunning grief, when the entire world seemed frozen or you, yourself, seemed to experience life behind a thick wall of glass or ice. Write about the yourself as if you were that apple frozen upon the tree. Describe being encased in ice, the numbness, the silence.

Or write about the slow thawing. What brought you back to the world, dropped you out of a frozen world.

Bonus prompt: write an ekphrastic poem using these images.

Origins—Prompts Inspired by Jenny George

What is the birthplace of forgiveness, the first breath of loneliness, the origin story of poverty? Write a poem or short story that describes the viscerally. For inspiration, read Jenny George’s “The Dream of Reason.” I’m grateful to Chelsea Dingham for posting it. Do credit Jenny George for your inspiration.

Bonus Prompt: Use the line “People will do anything” as a ghostline and create a list poem. For an added constraint, do not begin or end with an example of violence. Remember to give credit to erase the line and credit the poet.

Short Poem Challenge—A Prompt

I’ve always admired poets who could offer insight and power in just a few lines. Short poems can be the most difficult to write, as I will rediscover when I try to write one for next week’s workshop.

So to share the struggle, I am giving you the prompt to write a short poem—three lines or fewer—that encapsulates an event or a perspective or time period. You can choose to write a traditional haiku or borrow its syllable structure if you wish, but you can use any structure that works for you.

If you are stuck for inspiration, Twitter has once again provided some help:

Write a F-U-4Ever Poem to 2020–Let’s Break Up Hard With This F***-UP of a Year

Oh, 2020, you have been a colossal dumpsterfire. We aren’t just going to ghost you. No. We are going to burn your favorite jacket, mock your “O” face on TikTok, and chat up your younger sibling. We are going to do unto you what you deserve. I’ll bring the kerosene and you the shovel. If you’ve forgotten some of the truly bizarre and terrible events of the year, here’s a reminder of some of the weirder ones.

For the first prompt, write a breakup letter or a blackmail note to 2020, whichever is needed. Get it all out now. No holding back, no pulled punches, no “let’s be friends.” We aren’t getting back together with this year. Variation on the prompt: take a set of items that represent the year to you—the calendar, a ticket refund receipt, a picture of your empty couch, an expired restaurant coupon, a printout of a furlough notification, or other loss and cut, crumple and shred the items. Reassemble into a Frankenstein’s monster of a document and see if you can create a found poem from the text or ekphrastic from possible images.

For a bonus prompt, write a curse for the biggest bastard(s) of the year. Be petty—let every step taken be barefoot on a Lego—to truly vicious. Make it so.

You may need to write a series of poems about the last four years…

In the “I” of the Beholder—Prompts for Unreliable Narrators

When I first started writing, I often switched the “you” within the poem, or the “you” I was addressing was unclear. Now I am more concerned with the “I” in my poems. Not persona poems—that is a whole (or rather fragmented) other conversation—pun intended.

The “I” in my daily life is just as ambiguous: I continue to be an unreliable narrator, always learning that I again was wrong and then learning that my correction was an overreaction to the original error. Even caution can be an overcorrection, and second guessing a mental tic.

I never know when I am in the right or just am left guessing my way through the dark. The light keeps changing on me. So do my guesses.

For the first prompt, experiment with an unreliable narrator. Leave clues for the audience (and yourself) to discover but avoid the sudden epiphany, which is hard to pull off after its centuries of overuse. I will always love that lightning realization in Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” and Jane Austen’s Emma, but I am wary of the puppet master allure.

For the second prompt, write about a time in which all you had believed about an event was merely a lie you had told yourself or a another’s lie that you believed about yourself. How did you realize you were wrong? Did someone tell you? Why did you believe that person?

Or for a slight variation, take an old poem about an event in your life and look at it through your current viewpoint. What changes; what does not? And more intriguingly do you expect that you will change stance on this same event in the future, in the next 10 minutes?

For the last prompt, write a conversation between “the poet” and the “speaker” in one of your poems. How do “you” and how you present yourself as a poet juxtapose in the poem? Is the poem a scene or a landscape?

The Interior World and Navigation—Prompts Inspired by Oliver de la Paz

I’ve joined a writing workshop under Eric Morago, and it’s pushing me to expand my focus from individual poems to collections—their structure, motifs and themes. Unless a poetry collection is clearly arranged for a specific purpose, I usually skip around and ignore the placement of individual poems, which of course doesn’t help me prepare my own manuscript. I am truly enjoying this broader perspective in looking at poetry.

As part of the class, each of us was assigned to choose a collection and discuss its organization and themes as well as create a writing prompt. I chose Oliver de la Paz’s The Boy in the Labyrinth, a book I had longed for after reading his poem “Autism Screening Questionnaire—Speech and Language Delay.” The beauty of the poem’s answers to the harsh clinical questions stunned me the elusive quality of metaphor and imagery slipping the pinning of categories seemed akin to both parenting and writing—or any creation.

The book itself uses the structure of the Greek ode with its strophe, antistrophe and epode further divided into episodes of the introductory “Chorus” word problem or fill-in-the-blank poem and subsequent Labyrinth prose poems. The movement and structure dramatize the Greek myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. The inclusion of word problems and the three “Autism Screening Questionnaire” poems build upon themselves layer by layer, adding the outside world into an ever deeper interior. Sometimes the prose poems begin on the image from the previous as if we too are following the red string. Fascinating.

The poet discusses the structure here in an interview:

I almost always think of individual poems with respect to the poems adjacent to them—how a particular poem activates or negates the work surrounding it. I think in motif and pattern, and I love making bigger connections both in my own writing and in the work of writers whom I enjoy, either in individual poetry collections or a life’s work.

For the prompt, I want to use one of the Labyrinth prose poems for inspiration :

For the first prompt, create an interior world peopled by outside objects and internal responses. Let the objects move and fly and the senses intermingle within this self-constructed world.

For the second prompt, write a poem using the line “Pain is a layer” as a ghostline. Again, remember to erase that line but still credit the poet.

For a third prompt, write a poem using the following words from the poem: “torch,” “bird,” “surface,” “form,” “layer,” “tip,” “rock,” “stripes,” and “shadows” but use them as verbs instead of nouns.

For the final prompt, use the “Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay” as inspiration in how to translate the clinical or the mundane into the specific and personal.

Sign and Tree—Another Twitter Ekphrastic

In life, we oscillate among the sign, the tree and the observer and sometimes embody all three at once. Write a poem or short story from the perspective of one of them. Is the observer a trespasser after the sign disappears? If it is illegible? Who belongs here? Who decides?

More pics here.

Now write about a time in which you observed yourself erasing a version of yourself.

A tree with a prediction or a paradox

Fun With Venn Diagrams—A Visual Ars Poetica

Ouch. Perfect detail that “Art i make” barely touches “Art i like” and completely misses “Art that makes money.” Use the diagram as inspiration to write a combination ekphrastic and ars poetica.