Reverse time—Prompts

I am grateful to Gabrielle Bates for sharing this poem by Matt Rasmussen. It took my breath.

For the first prompt, reverse an event in your life—note, the event doesn’t have to be a tragedy. Although tragedy—and regret—lends itself particularly well to this device, something smaller and lighter would also be effective. Perhaps write about the first kiss you received from your current lover. You may find it easier to write in the usual time order first.

For the second prompt, use the line “The unsuffering ends” as a ghostline. What happens next? Make sure to delete the line and credit the poet with your inspiration.

For a third prompt, take a narrative poem you have already written and reorder starting from the bottom. What works and what doesn’t? Do you like the reordering better?

Although Teresa Leo’s “After Twelve Months, Someone Tells Me It’s Time to Join the Living” isn’t in a reverse order, it plays with time so beautifully.

Follow This—Prompts for Misunderstandings

We’ve all been there—in a bar or crowded restaurant and misheard someone’s comment. You think to yourself, “Why is he asking about whales?” only to realize later the topic is ales. Or perhaps that happens mostly to me. God knows what I’ve agreed to when I just smile and nod to a question I’ve already asked to be repeated.

Or we’ve attached the particleboard side front facing rather than in the back when putting together an IKEA shelf (well, I usually do).

These next prompts are about misunderstanding directions or comments.

Of course you can write a sestina if you wish, or you can imagine trying to follow these directions after they were yelled to you in a crowd and break the form in interesting ways.

For a second prompt, take these directions or another set of directions, and replace one word with another object or image. What would happen if you replaced “stanzas” with “decades” and “line/lines” to “loss/losses”? The inspiration for this exercise comes from HanaLena Fennel who has an amazing poem that does this in her collection Letters to the Leader.

For a third prompt, write the instruction manual for your life. How do you build your years? How do you adhere your memories, sort the people you’ve turned to, fasten the houses you’ve lived in and left?

If you need a freewriting exercise to get going, try writing the instruction manual for this escape route.

Have fun writing!

Gothic Your Town—Prompts

If you are as tired of writing different versions of the same depressing poem in various forms as I am, explore a new genre. Maybe combine the aesthetics of a fiction genre into a poem. I love this thread of tweets that combines gothic tone and Minneapolis. And it is true: 35W is always under construction.

Raised in the Midwest, I FEEL this to the marrow of my corn-fed bones:

For your first prompt, describe your hometown or current town using the tropes of a fiction genre— gothic, horror, whatever fits best. Try writing it as a prose poem, and then try a version with stanzas and line breaks. What happens? Which works better and why?

For another challenge, try to write a prose poem in which one sentence or phrase is repeated at least three times with the purpose of building tension. If you are having difficulty, make a list of five common sayings in your area. Which of the five stands out. Begin with that statement and create a chorus effect.

Here are two more examples of the writer doing this so well:

For a third prompt, describe Main Street, or the most famous street in your city, in one sentence. Begin with that image but focus tighter and tighter until you end up with a single image of a broken bottle, dead bird along the curb, or some other stark image. See what happens.

Here is a photo from my favorite restaurant in Minneapolis. Perhaps it will put you in the mood.

And birds. We must have birds for gothic.

Yes, birds.

That is your final prompt.

Good luck writing!

Sealey Challenge—with Prompts

So at least I am reading more than previous, but definitely not every day. How are you all doing on the challenge? I hope better than I have!

Even though I haven’t read as much as intended, I at least have read excellent books. Kelly Gray’s Instructions for an Animal Body is wonderful, filling my head with dripping moss, the shadows of wings, and transformation. I particularly loved “The Fox as Form.” Another of the poems from the collection, “When the Shooter Comes: Instructions for My Daughter,” was used as inspiration for the workshop I attend. It is powerful.

It was of course difficult to choose just one poem, and I realize now that “The Season of Motherhood” is a little less surreal and dark than most in the book, but I am missing my daughter, so this one called to me.

For the first prompt, describe two people in relationship antonyms—perhaps of seasons as shown here. Notice how the daughter is “Spring,” movement, sky, and brightness whereas the narrator describes herself as “Winter,” “stillness,” and earth. Binary oppositions have long been used in poetry, but focus on where the opposites meet and what pulls them together.

For the next prompt use the line “We intersect where the long grass is ice flat” as a ghostline. Go from there. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

The last prompt is a Mad Libs writing exercise. Take the poem’s structure but replace all of the nouns and action verbs with your own. See what happens. Perhaps a line you’ve recreated will inspire a poem of your own.

Good luck reading and writing!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

Although I had read Anna Ross’s Figuring last week (and have had it on my to-read shelf for years) and really enjoyed it, I am only now posting. Last week was a rough one.

The poems in this chapbook are titled in variations of “Self-Portrait” or “Report” and interweave themes of motherhood and nature and the brutality in each.

Although it was difficult to choose just one poem, I love the juxtaposition of the mundane and the surreal in “Self-Portrait with Catastrophe.”

For the first prompt, write a list poem of grocery items paired with abstractions. Like the “sour milk for memory,” give the abstract a taste and smell. What do you need? What won’t you be able to find? How much are you willing to pay?

For the second prompt, use the line “People are fleeing the aisle of unsent letters” for a ghostline. See what happens. After you’ve finished, remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

For the last prompt, write your own poem with the title of “Self-Portrait as Catastrophe” and again make sure to credit Ross.

Good luck writing and reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—And Prompts

I had heard Kathryn de Lancellotti read many of these poems at her book launch and immediately ordered the book—but had misplaced the entire shipment. I heartily recommend this book to everyone. You can purchase from the publisher here (full disclosure: many of my friends are involved with Moon Tide Press, and I have had poems published in its anthologies).

It was incredibly difficult to choose which poem to select for prompts, but I could not resist the beautiful language and imagery of “These Walls.”

For the first prompt, take the line “I would have never seen if not for the” and fill in your own image to use as a first line. See where you go from there.

For the second prompt, write a poem about advice you were given and what you did instead.

For the last prompt, begin a list of every medicine, self-medication, escapism or addition you’ve tried and where you are now.

Good luck writing and reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

I again finished a chapbook that has been in an unread pile for years—this time Kim Bridgford’s Doll, which uses traditional forms such sonnets and villanelles to explore society’s expectations of women.

Although I believe the submission window is closed now, you can subscribe to Duotrope to find out more about the the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest (I do not have a membership since I do not submit often enough to justify the expense, but you should try to submit more than I—everyone should).

My favorite poem in the collection is “Barbie Turns Fifty-Three,” perhaps because I can sympathize with an aging Barbie whose feet do not easily fit into heels (if ever mine did) and whose hopes for a future have turned to rearview mirror regrets.

For the first prompt, give a doll or action figure an age and use both the toy’s name and the age (e.g. “Tenderheart Bear Turns 37”) for your as Bridgford did. You will probably want to state “after Kim Bridgford” below the title. Try to write a sonnet if possible.

For the next prompt, use the line “And what is this new sorrow, and this ache?” for a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For the final prompt, write a poem about whom you believe the world is designed for. Examine the ways you are not that person.

Good luck and good reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

So this month has not gone as planned. I have finished only two books so far, but the month isn’t over.

Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike by Emilia Phillips is a book I’ve had for a long time (in that stack of unread books), and the whole structure and intertwined connections are fascinating.

As you can see below, there is no title. Each page consists of a few lines, and the objects are treated as characters, holding agency and often reappear throughout. For example, a metal chair “shrinks further / into itself” and later “offers a seat to the shadow.”

For the first prompt, make a list of five objects and a second list of five actions/emotions. See what connections you can make between the lists. Or cut each list into single items and place items from each list into separate hats, drawing randomly.

Push yourself to create characters out of a single object or challenge yourself to use all five objects in one poem or a poem divided into sections. See what happens.

For the next prompt, use the first lines, “In the abandoned / house, the floorboards crowd / like teeth” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

For the last prompt—again simply a writing exercise—take these lines and Mad Lib them, replacing the nouns and verbs with your own. Then if something sparks for you, take one of these recreated lines and use that for either your first line or your last.

Have fun reading and writing!

Sealey Challenge Update!—and Prompts

I am back in California from Mississippi. Obviously behind on the challenge, I did finish my first book: Terri Niccum’s The Knife Thrower’s Daughter published by Moon Tide Press. Terri is in the same workshop I’m in, and I enjoy the generosity of her perspective demonstrated in her comments there and in the worlds she creates in her poems.

One of my favorite poems in the book is “What She Told the River.” I love the imagery and the sound of the language.

For the first prompt, address an aspect of nature in a series of requests: the ocean, a stone within a river’s current, a tree clinging to a cliff side, a half-blown dandelion. Make a list of possible objects—living or not—and create a second list of qualities: resiliency, longevity, belonging, etc. Mix and match the answers. Or take one object/phenomenon and write a poem requesting a particular quality you wish to embody as it does.

For a second prompt, use the line “Make my journey a wet undoing” as a ghostline and go from there. Remember to erase the line and credit Terri with the inspiration.

For a writing exercise prompt, take the poem and use antonyms for the nouns and/or verbs. See what happens. Because the structure will be too similar to the original, this is just a writing exercise.

Have fun reading and writing this month!

I Am in This Photo, and I Do Not Like It—Prompts

So tomorrow begins the Sealey Challenge, and I am behind on my reading. A few weeks ago I gave in and just organized my unread books on the bookshelves rather than stacking them into leaning towers as a to-read reminder. I do not need to call myself out like that when there exist plenty of callouts already—as in the meme below.

So that meme really hit home since I had planned to have my manuscript completed two years ago and even finished a manuscript workshop.

If you were likewise targeted by that meme, write a list poem of all the tasks you have finished instead of your manuscript. Make your list as trivial or as surreal as you wish.

For the next prompt, find a meme that made you simultaneously laugh and bow your head in shame and write an ekphrastic poem.

The third prompt is to use “Why violence why” for a ghostline or as an epigraph. Be sure to credit Lysz Flo.

For a final prompt, find an unflattering picture of yourself that you wished didn’t exist and write a praise poem to that former self. Be kind.

Bonus prompt: what did you say to make the fish react this way?

Sealey Challenge Coming Soon!

I have been struggling to keep up with reading. My stack of unread books far outpaces my stack of read. I hope this August I can rekindle my reading habits. Just as with the last couple of years of not completing the 30/30 writing challenge but writing more poems than usual, I know that simply trying to participate will encourage me to read more poetry.

For more information on the challenge and how to connect with other readers and get great book recommendations, check out the website.

I hope you can join me, but if not, no worries. We are all in this together!

The Faces We Make in the World—Prompts Inspired by Lisel Mueller

I love this poem—how it reflects the human need to anthropomorphize the world around around us and the inherent loneliness in human sentience.

As a child, I saw faces in the knotty pine walls of my bedroom and in the clouds; said goodnight to the headboard’s scratch that looked like a duck or a snake, depending upon my mood; and made windows the eyes of houses watch me as I was driven past.

For the first prompt, anthropomorphize an object in your home or one you encounter daily. Give it a life of its own. Or don’t. The contrapuntal could be an interesting structure for this experiment. Here is a previous post on the contrapuntal. I was fascinated by Trace DePass’s discussion of the form (published in Teachers & Writers Magazine).

For a second prompt, take the first line as a ghostline and “and so” it. Move it in a different direction from the original. Or take one of the examples “the country a heart” and explore how that shapes or restricts language and thought. We embody the world with our language, calling our countries motherland or fatherland. Do remember to erase the line and credit the poet for the inspiration.

If you also see faces, do they seem human or animal or simply something alive? To me this seemed like an owl in the rock:

Do you search for yourself as apparently Cookie Monster does?

Are the faces you usually find happy? Or not?

I found this shocked sink on a walk last week.

And of course do you see a face in the moon when you look up? Or look for humanity on other planets?

If you would like more examples of pareidolia (the phenomenon of perceiving specific images, usually faces or animals, in random visual patterns), check out this article from The Mary Sue or read a longer explanation of pareidolia from this BBC article, which also includes a few photos. I can empathize with the worried alarm clock.

Light—Prompts Inspired by Andrea Cohen

I love the simple power of this short poem by Andrea Cohen. So much in so few lines! Tone, language, and form all working together.

For the first prompt, think of a pair of connected nouns like “lamp” and “lamplighter” to set up a relationship between the two that the poem explores. Here are some suggestions: fire/firefighter, garden/gardener or tree/arborist, canvas or paint/painter, cave/spelunker, and safe or vault/banker. See what sparks for you. Do be careful that you don’t follow the poet’s structure too closely, and you may need to provide credit for the inspiration with an “After Andrea Cohen” under your title.

For the next prompt, use the lines “and someone, must in bereaved rooms sit, unfathoming” as a ghostline. Do remember to erase the line and give the poet credit.

The third prompt is also a ghostline. Use the line “Someone must be the ____” as a jumping off point. Again, remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For a purely writing exercise, simply use the poem as a mad libs exercise. The structure will of course be too close to the original. However, if after inserting your own nouns, verbs, and adjectives, you find that the ideas resonate, you can choose a different form. Make sure to create your own overall structure and syntax/line structure.

Bonus prompt: write a poem as if the photo were your hometown you were returning to after years away.

After—Prompts Inspired by Nikita Gill

Following Nikita Gill on Twitter (@nktgill) has led me to discover so many beautiful poems she’s shared. It seems perfect that another poet on Twitter shared a lovely one of hers.

I love so many of the lines in this poem, and the structure itself is fascinating: how much of it consists of threes (three “afters,” three “pains,” and three “ends.” For the first prompt, trying constructing a poem into three interconnecting sets of three concepts or images. Perhaps structure it almost like a novel as three beginning images (dawn, spring flower, etc.) followed by three conflicts (a fire, storm, or predator’s attack) and ending with images of night. See what happens.

For the second prompt, take one of the “after” lines: “What happens after we meet the light,” “After the grief ends,” or “After we walk into happiness” for a ghostline and jump off from there. What does happen? Create a place that you can touch and smell. Remember to erase the line but give credit to the poet for your inspiration with “After Nikita Gill” or similar acknowledgment.

For the last prompt, use “life promised to be a moving thing” as a ghostline for your starting point. Again, remove the line from your poem and credit the poet.

Bonus prompt: write a poem for the Luna moth I fished out of the Buffalo River too late to save. I did manage to rescue a bee and place it on the river bank.

Matryoshka Doll a Poem—Prompts Inspired by Faylita Hicks

For the next prompt choose a poem that resonates with you and imitate its structure. If you need another example, look at Faylita Hicks’ “#LoveMachine”and notice how each line leads to the next through a repetition that drives the poem forward.

For the first prompt, using “#LoveMachine” as a guide, write a statement, perhaps a commonplace one or a quote from someone else, but follow it with an image.

For a second prompt, create a Matryoshka doll of your stanzas as the poet did in her last stanzas. Using repetition, cut the lines down so that one runs to a smaller line nesting inside it.

For another prompt, use the line “the small body of my machine” as a ghostline and go from there. Remember to erase the line and give credit to the poet.

Bonus prompt: write a phrase and do an image search of it and write about that.

Prompts Inspired by Gregory Orr

So much said in so few words. Amazing

For the first prompt, write an origin story. For ideas to write about try to keep a folder of odd animals facts, weird news stories, photos of lost places and bizarre objects (and NOT fifty tabs in your browser).

For the second prompt, use the line “Let them go, let them be ghosts” for a ghostline. Write from there. Remember to erase the ghostline but still give the poet credit for the inspiration.

For the third prompt to just practice writing, take “Origin of the Marble Forest” and replace all the nouns and/or verbs with antonyms. See what happens. Remember that this is just an exercise since it will be too close to the original unless you completely restructure the poem and rewrite the lines.

Good luck! Good writing!

Ekphrastic This—Prompts to Embarrass My Mother

The first prompt is to write an ekphrastic poem of the bottom photo, or a comparison of the two.

For the next prompt, write an ekphrastic poem on the next photo or a meditation on how we so often see what we want to see rather than reality. Throw in some muppet references.

For the next ekphrastic prompt, write about either view or a combination.

Last ekphrastic prompt:

Bonus prompt: write a list poem of art in your daily life or the things you find beauty in that others do not. Be as serious or as ridiculous as you like.

Good luck!

Pay Homage to Your Heroes or Parody Famous Poems for Fun and Writing Practice—Prompts

If you are feeling dry—both in writing and in editing—sometimes a fun exercise is to riff off of famous poems. It’s a good way to keep practicing craft even during the dry periods, and you can give joy to others.

Twitter had a trend of people spoofing the famous William Carlos Williams poem “This is Just to Say” a while back. Recently, artist and illustrator Dawline Oni-Eseleh offered her own version on an @AITA thread (Am I the Asshole). Perfection! Follow her on Twitter (@Dawlinejane_Art) and check out her website. If you are inspired to write an ekphrastic poem for one of her artworks, make sure to name the piece and give her credit.

For your first prompt, write your own version of the poem. Bonus points if you can write a poem that skewers an asshole.

And, yes, I have offered this same prompt, but I have a soft place for this particular poem because my maiden name sounds like “plum” and have written multiple versions of the poem.

For the next prompt, choose another poem to follow the structure but using your own words and experiences. Be careful that instead of paying respect to a poet or parodying a famous poem, you aren’t simply plagiarizing. If you feel that your intention may not be completely clear, don’t share the poem as your own but consider this as just an exercise. Not all poems need to be published or performed.

Bonus prompt: write an ekphrastic of this monument to my culinary skills. Or a horror haiku. Your choice.

Revising and Recreating—Prompts

April was the month for writing new poems, and this month is for editing and for recreating.

Using Kristen Baum’s cutting-up method of revision (see here for her explanation and demonstration), print one of your poems that you feel needs to be rearranged and cut it up into the phrases you want to keep together and into individual words. Give yourself plenty of space—a table or even the floor—to play around with the order. Find out which words and phrases you can leave out. You may need to add more words into the mix, so make another printout, cut them out, and include them. See what works. Experiment and play.

For a writing/editing prompt, let’s cento a new poem out of those you’ve left sitting in folders. Take several of those 30/30 poems that you are unhappy with and any older poems that you have also given up on further editing and cut each line up into separate strips of paper. Since these are your own poems, you of course can add words and punctuation as needed, but first try to use each line as is to see if that constraint can push you into a new direction.

I hope these suggestions help you give new life to a poem you’ve abandoned.

For a bonus prompt, write about a place you had left behind but discovered it grown new life when you returned. Perhaps you visited a childhood home and saw new trees and flowers planted in the front yard or maybe a tire swing or play set. Has the tree limb you broke climbing it grown another branch? Describe these new possibilities, or look for the ghost of your child self and those of your family that seem to remain. Is your name carved somewhere?

May You Edit All Month Long—Editing Prompts

So you’ve completed the 30/30 challenge and have aa April-full of poems. Or perhaps you are like me, never finished even two weeks’ worth of poems. Now what? Continue writing. Maybe make the first half of May your time to finish the poems you started, or had planned to. I didn’t get out blog posts regularly either. Sorry!!!

So you can catch up on writing, or you can start editing. Some poems you may need to set aside for a while. You may instead want to edit old poems. You may find that some poems—those from April and others from years ago—are unfixable. If so, pull what you like from them and start collecting those lines and phrases in a document for later use.

For those poems you’re ready to dig into, try some of the techniques discussed in previous posts. To find the heart of the poem, try looking at the fourth or fifth line from the bottom. Begin the poem there and continue.

You could try switching the first half and second of your poem, and either begin writing after the original ending or try to create a beginning for the former first half. See what happens.

You could play with the structure. What happens if you take a prose poem and divide it into stanzas and shorter lines, or vice versa, make a prose poem from the original. Experiment with line length and stanzas. What works?

Perhaps the structure works but the language is imprecise or bulky. What is redundant? Look at your verbs. Do they stand out? What about the last word in the lines? Conversely, are small words stacking up at the beginning of lines? What can you cut? What images are you conveying? Are they relevant? Does the poem need a clearer sense of time or place?

I will try to post more editing suggestions later this month, along with generative prompts. And remember some poems (and revisions) won’t succeed, but the process of writing is to keep practicing and experimenting (and continue reading and learning from others too). And if you end up with an epic failure of a piece, you can take comfort in your shared experience.