It’s become a meditative practice for me to curate and create these prompt calendars, fueled partially by my own joy and partially, now, by the delightfully bewildering fact that so many, many, many of you are writing daily because of them! And allowing yourselves to be led by them!
It’s a privilege beyond measure to see your poems, to run into/meet you at events and workshops and festivals and connect online and hear about how the prompts impact you, what you’re doing with them, who you’re sharing them with and how you’re sharing them. Magic, magic.
As always, take what you wish and leave the rest. Write daily or return as you wish. I hope these prompts lead you somewhere—to water, a memory, something else.
Poetry is for everybody, no matter what.
Ask yourself, “did I survive?” Write a poem in which each line is a reason why the answer is yes.
Read “Milkweed” by James Wright. Notice how the turn is at the center of the poem: “I look down now. It is all changed.” Time moves differently before and after that line. Write a poem titled after a plant (“Iris”; “Poppy”; “Fiddlehead” etc.) and model the poem’s sense of time after Wright’s. Build in a turn at the center—a before the middle and an after.
Read “My Panic Attacks” by Ron Riekki. Notice how repetitive the poem is, how many specific words and ideas return again and again, how cyclical the language is and how the cyclical nature of a panic attack is alive in these language choices. Think of an aspect of your own mental health experience and try to write a poem that uses language in a way that lends itself to the reality—physical, emotional, or otherwise—of that experience.
Write a poem that includes these words: strawflower, ash, candle, cramp, backward, and fresh.
Read “Digging” by Seamus Heaney. Think about something that has been handed down to you—from a parent, a grandparent, an elder in your life—that feels alive in you now. Think of how it is the same and think of how it has transformed in you. Notice how, for Heaney, it’s gardening and writing—two kinds of digging, but still the digging continues through the generations. Write a poem that digs into what was handed down to you and examines what you carry now.
Read “Spell for the End of Grief” by Amie Whittemore. Write a spell.
Watch this video, directed by Irish poet and filmmaker Luke Morgan, of Aoife Lyall’s “Torch”. Whatever stirs in you, write that poem.
Write an ekphrastic poem. Choose a piece of artwork in your home—a photograph, a painting, a print, a postcard or greeting card—and interact with it. An example: “Edgar Degas: The Millinery Shop” by Adam Zagajewski (tr. Clare Cavanaugh).
Read “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann. Write a poem in the form of a letter to someone in the future—a stranger, a loved one, someone you used to know, etc.
Read “Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice” by Matthew Olzmann. Write a poem in the form of a letter to someone who is asking you for advice. This could be based on an actual event, but it might not be. If you could give advice on something, anything, what would you want to say?
Read “Exercise in Remembering Home” by emet ezell. Write a poem in all lowercase that has long lines and uses alliteration.
Write a poem about the color green. Make “Green” your title. Never mention the word “green”.
If you followed along in April, you’ll remember the litany prompt. Poets.org characterizes a litany as “a poetic form that typically uses repetition to catalog a resonant series of invocations or supplications in resemblance to or actually serving as a type of prayer”. Read “Litany” by Dorsía Smith Silva and “Litany” by Rick Barot. Write a litany called “Litany”.
Write a poem that begins with the line, “I did it because…”.
Read “The Kingfisher” by Mary Oliver. Notice her use of adjectives and adverbs and how she chooses simple, plain words. Think of an animal you admire. Write a poem that uses simple, plain adjectives and adverbs to describe an animal you admire. Let it surprise you.
Read “Blast” by Kay Ryan. Notice how tight the poem is, how it almost seems like it’s being squeezed, and notice how many sounds are coming together. For example: “the incidental/sounds of practical/activities and crows”. Say that line out loud to yourself. Look at those c’s and s’s and l’s and soft a’s—both consonants and vowels are coming together and stacking (which are called consonance and assonance), and there’s the elastic-bands-in-your-mouth pang of alliteration and the surprise landing of slant rhyme. See if you can write a poem that feels tight and slim like this while being totally full of sound.
Read three poems. Read them again. Write. This is a prompt taught to me by the poet Fran Quinn (if this isn’t your first time following along with me, you’ll know this prompt). He says to allow the thing that comes alive between all three poems to be channeled into your own poem, which becomes the fourth poem. Here are three poems for your consideration: “Straining for the Noise” by Jenny Xie, “Srdičko Bolí” by Claressinka Anderson, and “Has Your Spirit Dried Up?” by emet ezell.
Read “The Hours” by Leah Umansky. Write a poem that references a show you like, a street name, a brand of food, a film, two beverages, three places, and a person.
Read “Earth, You Have Returned to Me” by Elaine Equi. Write a poem that begins with a question broken into three lines.
Write a poem that includes these words: mist, cherry, window, wish, wrench, and muddled.
Read Bhanu Kapil’s “Twelve Questions”. Write a poem that answers each question. Title it “Answering Bhanu Kapil’s Questions”.
Consider the poem “12 Questions” that the poet Chen Chen wrote in response to yesterday’s poem. Write your own 12 questions. Be sure to add the epigraph “after Bhanu Kapil” or “after Chen Chen and Bhanu Kapil”, whichever feels more appropriate for the way your poem turns out. Bonus points if you write a poem based on his second poem, “Formula for a Day”, too.
Write a contrapuntal. A contrapuntal is a poem in two separate parts, physically separate on the page in some way, most commonly in two columns, that can be read across as one poem or separately as two. Some examples: “My Father” by Ollie Schminkey, “I Do Have a Seam” by Jamaal May, “Notes on My Present: A Contrapuntal” by Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and “At the Intersection” by Brian Bilston.
Go to thesaurus.com. Type in the first word that comes to your mind. Choose a synonym for that word. Do the same for another word. Type in “poised”. Choose a synonym. Type in “uncertain”. Choose a synonym. Write a short poem incorporating those four words.
Read “Poem Full of Worry Ending with My Birth” by Tarfia Faizullah. Write a poem about something that worries you.
Write a poem titled “Thank You”.
Read “Ditty of First Desire” by Federico García Lorca (tr. Paul Weinfield) and “Ditty” by Kevin Young. Write a ditty.
Odes are traditionally poems of praise and a celebration of beauty, but I invite you to write an ode to something that you find ugly in some way. Try to find the grace in it. Some examples: “Ode to the Maggot” by Yusef Komunyakaa and “O New York!” by Mong-Lan.
Read “The Breathing, the Endless News” by Rita Dove. Notice that “god” is lowercase. Notice the work the dolls are doing, facing god the whole way through the poem. Write a poem in which the word “god” is present but not capitalized. Be critical. Be curious. Let the poem ask questions of you. Let your anger come through. See what comes after it.
Read “Naming the Heartbeats” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Read it again. Write a poem about naming something.
Poems I’m thinking about right now
Failed Essay on Privilege by Elisa Gonzalez
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
The Kookaburras by Mary Oliver
If All My Relationships Fail and I Have No Children Do I Even Know What Love Is by Patrick Rosal
A low stakes way to support my time
I don’t ever want to gatekeep what I share in my Substack, but these postings do take time to compile—sometimes quite a bit of time—so I decided that this may be a good alternative: if you would like to “tip” me for any of the time it took to write this, if you felt moved or supported by it, you can buy me a coffee <3
I’ve also very recently turned on paid subscriptions because you people with your sweet, generous hearts were pledging paid memberships even though there is no paywall! So, a recurring $5 donation is also an option.
Hi, Audrey--Are people sharing their responses to the prompts somewhere that I can't find? I'd enjoy sharing a few of mine and reading others'. Thanks!
Thank you, Audrey! I most appreciate that the "use these words" ones are liberally sprinkled with opportunities to find poets new to me and to read their work with intention. I want you to know that I'm using these prompts to generate "random" poems for adults but also as a way into my current WIP, a prose/poetry book for middle graders called TREEOGRAPHY. They go both ways!