April is National Poetry Month

Writing Prompts by Kelli Russell Agodon – www.agodon.com
30 Writing Prompts for National Poetry Month
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1. Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of words
in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line.
2. Write about a poem about a superhero coming to your house and confronting you about
something. Somewhere in the poem, you have to state what your superpower is.
3. Write a poem that is really a love letter to an old flame. To make sure it’s doesn’t slip into sappy,
make sure one or more of these words are in the poem: dung beetle, politician, nuclear, exoskeleton,
oceanography, pompadour, toilet.
4. Make a list of seven words that have the same vowel sounds (like bee, treat, pepperoni, eagle) and use
them in a repetitive way throughout a poem.
5. Write a poem about a weird fact or several odd facts that you know.
6. Write a poem in two sections about two completely different things. Have the title link both items
today in a surprising way.
7. Find a favorite recipe. Now write a poem inspired or in the style of that recipe about a family
secret—yours or someone else’s.
8. Turn your paper so that it’s in the landscape position. Write a poem about God or the universe or
the horizon of the ocean with longer lines and see what happens.
9. Write a poem to your favorite letter of the alphabet.
10. Write a seven-line poem about one of the 7 Sins that only contains seven words in each of the lines.
11. Write a poem that begins with the last thing you can remember someone saying to you today or
yesterday. See if you can use that line two or three times.
12. Turn on the radio to any channel. Write a poem inspired by the first thing you hear (lyrics to a
song, a commercial, etc.)
13. Run around your house and grab 5 items that all begin with the same letter. Write a poem as an
ode to one of these items or that includes these items.
14. Think of the nicest thing someone ever said to you. Write a poem about a rainy day and something
flooding. End the poem with the good thing someone said.
15. Write a poem that describes the wallpaper on your computer or the image on the last postcard you
received.
Writing Prompts by Kelli Russell Agodon – www.agodon.com
16. Make a list of ten images of things you have seen in the last 24 hours. Use all of them in a poem.
17. Write a poem that includes these words: bamboozled, bloodlust, bibliography. Have the title include one
of these words: contradiction, constellation, cranberry.
18. Write a poem about something small that is only 5 lines long.
19. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds around you. If the sounds are peaceful, write a poem with
a violent word as the title. If the sounds are loud, write a poem with a kind word as the title.
20. Remove your shoes. Write a poem that celebrates your feet.
21. Write a poem with the opposite hand that you write with or if you type your poems on the
computer, use only one hand to type.
22. Write a poem that only had five syllables in each line. Give the poem a long title.
23. Write a poem where the last word of the first line begins with the first letter of your name, and the
last word of the second line begins with the second letter of your name until you have spelled out
your first and/or your last name.
24. Write a poem that has the word “love” hidden in it somewhere. You cannot use the word “love” by
itself, it must be hidden (such as in the word “glove” or in two words like “halo venom”).
25. Write a poem where a literary figure shows up and tells you something and/or gives you
something.
26. Write a poem to your future self, but do not say it is to your future self, address the poem to a
president or rockstar.
27. Write a poem made of ten metaphors.
28. Make a list of your favorite words today. Write a poem that uses 90% of the words you wrote
down.
29. Write a poem about a skyscraper. Now, rewrite the poem with the last line being your first.
30. Write a poem giving thanks to a poet or to writing a poem a day. Use a line from one of the poems
you wrote this month to either begin or end it.

A POEM A DAY BY DAISY FRIED

1. Write a ten-line poem in which each line is a lie.

2. Write a poem that tells a story in 18 lines or less, and includes at least four proper nouns.

3. Write a poem that uses any of the senses EXCEPT SIGHT as its predominant imagery.

4. Write a poem inspired by a newspaper article you read this week.

5. Write a poem without adjectives.

6. Ask your roommate/neighbor/lover/friend/mother/anyone for a subject (as wild as they want to make it) for a ten-minute poem. Now write a poem about that subject in ten minutes; make it have a beginning, a middle and an end.

7. Write the worst poem you possibly can. Now edit it and make it even worse.

8. Poem subject: A wind blows something down. Or else it doesn’t. Write it in ten minutes.

9. Write a poem with each line, or at least many of the lines, filling in the blanks of “I used to________, but now I_________.”

11. Write a poem consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never would, to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best

friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.

12. Write a poem that uses as a starting point a conversation you overheard.

13. First line of today’s poem: “This is not a poem, but…”

14. Write a poem in the form of either a letter or a speech which uses at least six of the following words: horses, “no, duh,” adolescent, autumn

leaves, necklace, lamb chop, Tikrit, country rock, mother, scamper, zap, bankrupt. Take no more than 13 minutes to write it.

15. Write a poem which includes a list or lists-shopping list, things to do, lists of flowers or rocks, lists of colors, inventory lists,

lists of events, lists of names…

16. Poem subject: A person runs where no running is allowed. Write it in ten minutes.

17. Write a poem in the form of a personal ad.

18. Write a poem made up entirely of questions. Or write a poem made up entirely of directions.

19. Write a poem about the first time you did something.

20. Write a poem about falling out of love.

21. Make up a secret. Then write a poem about it. Or ask someone to give you a made-up or real secret, and write a poem about it.

22. Write a poem about a bird you don’t know the name of.

23. Write a hate poem.

24. Free-write for, say, 15 minutes, but start with the phrase “In the kitchen” and every time you get stuck, repeat the phrase “In the

kitchen.” Alternatively, use any part of a house you have lots of associations with-”In the garage,” “In the basement,” “In the bathroom,” “In the yard.”

25. Write down 5-10 words that sound ugly to you. Use them in a poem.

26. Write a poem in which a motorcycle and a ballerina appear.

27. Write a poem out of the worst part of your character.

28. Write a poem that involves modern technology-voice mail, or instant messaging, or video games, or… 29. Write a seduction poem in which somebody seduces you.

30. Radically revise a poem you wrote earlier this month.

List poem

AGENDA:

https://jobryantnz.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/what-is-a-list-poem/

Try writing a list poem.

What is a list poem?

A list poem is just that. A list of things. List poems first appeared thousands of years ago. The bible has list poems. Think of the family genealogy lists. Homer’s Iliad also has list poems in its lists of Trojan War heroes.

Lists are part of life. It has been used throughout the centuries to make an inventory of things.

A list poem can be a list of either people, places, things you do, items, even ideas you may have. It can rhyme, but doesn’t have to. Repetition is often a tool used in a list poem.

One thing a list poem is not is a random list. Most list poems are thought out and not just casual items.

The last item in a list poem usually has meaning – by that I mean it is often an important item.
With a list poem you are trying to get the reader to look and think about what is in your list.
Like a story there is a beginning and there is an end.
Keep consistency with the style and remember to create a parrallel structure with your words.

Ekphrastic poetry

AGENDA:

Read the article on ekphrastic poetry:

https://www.thoughtco.com/ekphrastic-poetry-definition-examples-4174699

Work on an ekphrastic poem or the handout (ars poetica--A Simple Exercise)

Take quiz on poetry terms on vocabulary.com

Poetry Terms

AGENDA:

Review poetry terms:

https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/poeterms.htm

Practice poetry terms on vocabulary.com

Quiz on Monday

Continue to work on poetry

Evie Shockley

"ode to my blackness" by evie shockley

you are my shelter from the storm

and the storm

my anchor

and the troubled sea

nights casts you warm and glittering

upon my shoulders some would

say you give off no heat some folks

can’t see beyond the closest star

you are the tunnel john henry died

to carve

i see the light

at the end of you the beginning

i dig down deep and there you are at the root of my blues

you’re all thick and dark, enveloping the root of my blues

seem like it’s so hard to let you go when i got nothing to lose

without you, I would be just

a self of my former shadow

Revising poems

AGENDA:

Revising poems

1. Search for form. One of the first things I like to do after “finishing” a first draft is to count syllables to see if I’ve written a poem in a certain form. Sometimes, I’ll even do this mid-draft if I get the feeling that a form is establishing itself. By form, I don’t mean traditional forms, though sometimes that can happen. A form could be as simple as 8-syllable lines or a pattern of 7-, 9-, and 5-syllable lines (which happened to me over the weekend). The nice thing about form is that it acts as the skeleton for the poem–the structure that gives shape to the body of the poem.
2. Look for ways to cut. One quality I love about poetry versus other forms of writing is the genre’s concision. The best way to make a poem concise is to cut out all the extra fat of a poem. This might include prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs. It might also include cutting lines that “explain” what a poem means or is getting at.
3. Pay attention to line breaks. While every word in your poem should have a purpose, readers place more emphasis on the ends and beginnings of lines–the places where the lines break. For me, I try to find ways to surprise readers here. Of course, every line doesn’t have the potential for enjambment or clever turns of phrase, but every poem I write gets a thorough line break inspection.
4. Listen for sounds. I mentioned concision as a quality I love about poetry, but the chief quality I love about poetry (and this is showing my own bias) is the musical nature of poetry. When done well, I think poetry–including poetry that doesn’t rhyme–reads (and can be read) as music. As such, I already try to write first drafts with sound in mind, but then I go through the drafts looking for potential end rhymes, internal rhymes, and consonance. For this step, I do read the poem aloud at different times of the day and in different moods (and even voices).
5. Make things concrete. This step does not involve “spelling out” the meaning of the poem. Instead, I look for any abstract words that made it into the poem (words like “love,” “hate,” and “fear”) and try replacing them with concrete words and images. At times, I even replace concrete words with more specific (or unusual) concrete words.

These ways to revise poems are in a numbered list, but that doesn’t mean I follow this order when revising poetry. Poems evolve and making language concrete may throw off the syllable pattern or create a new pattern. Breaking lines in specific places can affect form as well.

So I often go through these steps several times for each poem I want to submit. After leaving the poem alone for a while, I’ll go through them again–even with poems that have been published. Poets tinker.


More ideas for revision:

Before you begin to strip down your poem or abandon it as no good or decide it’s good enough as it is, first consider how you might expand your poem. The following expansion strategies just might help you to discover your poem’s true potential and arrive at the genuine.

1. Choose a single poem by someone else, one that has strong diction. Take ten words from that poem and, in no particular order, plug them into your own draft. Make them make sense within the context of your poem, adjusting your context as needed. Or let the words introduce an element of the strange, a touch of the surreal.

2. Find the lifeless part of your poem. This is often the part where your mind begins to wander when you read the poem aloud. Open up space there and keep on writing in that space. Repeat elsewhere if needed. Remember that freewriting can occur not only while drafting but also while revising.

3. Find three places in the poem where you could insert a negative statement. Then go into the right margin of your draft and write those statements. Add them to the poem. By being contrary, you might add depth and richness to the poem.

4. Go into the right margin and write some kind of response to each line, perhaps its opposite, perhaps a question. The material that you add to the right margin just might be your best material, the real material. Bring what works into the poem. Make friends with the right margin; good things happen out there.

5. Put something into your poem that seemingly doesn’t belong, perhaps some kind of food, a tree, a piece of furniture, a policeman, or a dog. Elaborate.

6. Add a color and exploit it throughout the poem. This is often a surprisingly effective enlivening strategy, one that can alter the tone of the poem.

7. Go metaphor crazy. Add ten metaphors or similes to the poem. Keep the keepers.

8. Look up the vocabulary of an esoteric subject that has nothing to do with your poem. The subject might be mushroom foraging, astronomy, cryogenics, perfume-making, bee keeping, the Argentinian tango, or zombies. Make a list of at least ten words. Include a variety of parts of speech. Import the words into your poem. Develop as needed.

9. Pick any one concrete object in your poem and personify it throughout the poem. For example, if there’s a rock, give it feelings, let it observe and think, give it a voice. As the object comes alive, so may the poem.

10. Midway or two-thirds into your poem, insert a story, perhaps something from the newspaper, a book you’ve read, a fable, or a fairy tale. Don’t use the entire story, just enough of it to add some texture and weight to your poem. Your challenge is to find the connection between this new material and what was already in the poem.

Now go into your folder of old, abandoned poems, the ones you gave up on when you decided they just weren’t going anywhere. Then get out some of your recent poems that feel merely good enough, the ones that never gave you that jolt of excitement we get when a poem is percolating. Finally, return to some of the poems that you’ve submitted and submitted with no success, those poor rejects.

Mark all of these poems as once again in progress. Now apply some of the expansion strategies and see if you can breathe new life into the poems. Remember that this kind of revision is not a matter of merely making the poem longer; it’s a matter of making the poem better.

Poetry Workshop #1

AGENDA:

Period 7---Continue work on poetry collection

Poetry postcards--click on link at right of blog posts--design a poetry postcard in Photoshop or Paint

Period 8---Workshop #1--whole class

More Poetry Exercises/Erasure Poems

AGENDA:

Spend 15-20 minutes trying out these writing exercises to warm up.

https://hobbylark.com/writing/Five-Poetry-Writing-Exercises

http://www.jacarandapress.org/writing/poetry/index.shtml

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/poetry_writing/poetry_invention_exercises.html

https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson171.shtml

https://www.thoughtco.com/found-poetry-4157546


Try an erasure poem:

http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/02/from-snow-city


Rita Dove's ten Minute Spill:
This is something I've assigned several times, both here and when the group met in real-time. It's an assignment that is quick but effective. It was devised by Rita Dove.

Write a ten-line poem. The poem must include a proverb, adage, or familiar phrase (examples: she's a brick house, between the devil and the deep blue sea, one foot in the grave, a stitch in time saves nine, don't count your chickens before they hatch, someday my prince will come, the whole nine yards, a needle in a haystack) that you have changed in some way, as well as five of the following words:

cliff                    blackberry
needle                   cloud
voice                    mother
whir                     lick

Instructions: Write a ten-line poem. The poem must include a proverb, adage or familiar phrase that you changed in some way as well as five of the following words:

cliff                  blackberry

needle            cloud

voice              mother

whir              lick  

You have ten minutes.

I chose the adage “good things come to those who wait.” The change made is this: “the lazy ones spend all their time waiting.”

5 words chosen: needle, voice, mother, lick, cloud



Waiting for Glory

Growing up, his mother would lick all his wounds

And that was the root of the problem

He wasn’t grounded

Whenever he fell, he landed on her cloud

What he destroyed, she carefully stitched new with needle and thread

He didn’t have to lift a finger

He had no voice, she spoke for him

He had no choice, she coddled him

By her account, he was good and good things come to those who wait

It’s just that, the lazy ones spend all their time waiting