More poetry prompts

List of Poetry Prompts

• Write a poem about blue sand and red crabs.
  
• Write a poem about soup taste like happiness.
  
• Write a poem about someone sad. Use the words despair and summer.
  
• Write a poem about a woman who works at Barnes & Noble.
  
• Write a poem about a scientific wonder.
  
• There's probably Breaking News on CNN right now. Create a poem about it. But in yours make sure it is raining.
  
• Write a poem about tomorrow. Use the word toothpaste.
  
• Write a poem about Brad and his spectacular day.
  
• Write a poem about Instagram.
  
• Write a poem on the bus about a train.
  
• Write a rain poem.
  
• Write a poem about a man filing his taxes.
  
• Write a poem about a party.
  
• Write a poem about a lost dog that is found.
  
• Write a death poem. The Grim Reaper should make an appearance.
  
• Write a short poem about nothing.
  
• Flip to a random page in your journal. Use a word on that page in a poem.
  
• What song have you been listening to a lot lately? Use a word from it in a title of your next poem.
  
• Write an a poem about an apple.
  
• Use the words green, farm and tree in a poem.
  
• Write a romantic poem about a gift.
  
• Write a poem about Bing, Google and DuckDuckGo.
  
• Write a poem about a dare that backfires.
  
• Write a poem about how something smells.
  
• Write a haiku about poetry prompts.
  
• Write a poem about how watching that last horror movie made you feel.
  
• Write a poem about coffee and shoveling snow but don't use the words white, cold, frozen or hot.
  
• Write a poem about a girl who keeps stealing books from a used bookstore.
  
• Use these three words in a poem: love, grass and cat.
  
• Write a poem about the hungriest day of your life.
  
• Write a love poem without using the word love.
  
• Write a poem about frogs and vomit.
  
• Write a poem about caffeine and/or running when you are feeling really groggy.
  
• Write a short poem as fast as you can. Use the word blazing.
  
• Write a poem about betrayal and revenge. Make it intense.
  
• Write a poem about something bizarre that happens at a writing conference.
  
• Write a poem about another poet.
  
• Write a poem that includes a hat and the wind.
  
• Write a poem about a big dinosaur.
  
• Make someone you know doesn't like writing poems write a poem and then write a poem about it.
  
• Take three of your poems and mash them into a new poem.
  
• Write a poem about things that live in the swamp.

Meaning of a Word Poem/Etymology

Multiple Meaning of a Word Poem

Explore the multiple meanings of a word. Check out dictionaries and encyclopedias, including the O. E. D.

Example:

Unsystem the System

BY KIMBERLY GREY

WE DON’T SAY we are armed when we mean
our arms. We don’t say
                          we are armed.

Though our arms are real,
             they are really arms,
                           and we could use them
to disarm ourselves now.
             We could use them
             to squeeze or hold or load
                          not a gun, not a gun,
             please not another gun.

But maybe a face that needs holding.
Or some laundry
             that needs folding, like that other night
                         when I faced you, pulled your shirt
             over your arms and heard you say,
                          everyone deserves this.

And I didn’t know if you meant a shirt
or arms or just someone
             to pull it off of you.
                         Someone to touch
             your free skin, to see the face
when a shirt leaves it, in good awe.

Awe, which sounds like
             Arms. Arms that could be
                            are they sometimes only just these
blasted and beautiful extensions—

Lover, I’ve said so much. World we have not said. No
             we don’t say armed
             when we mean our arms,
though we are armed. Though we are, all
                          of us, perfectly armed.

Workshop

AGENDA:

Ekphrastic poems

Workshop

Gamzon Ekphrastic Photo Poem

A Five-turn Knot

            I really did not think Mrs. Surratt would be swung from the end of it, but she was, and it   was         demonstrated to my                 satisfaction, at least, that a five-turn knot will perform as         successful a job as a            seven-turn knot.—Colonel                 (Captain) Christian Rath

Upstairs in his room at the penitentiary,

the hangman prepared

four nooses for the executions,

carefully measuring out the lengths

of Boston hemp brought in

from the Navy Yard,

cutting and saving one last length of rope

for mother-- just in case--still praying

he would not need it the next day.

Three seven-turn knots

for three of the condemned.

Three regulation hangman knots

neatly wound military style.

The captain slighted the fourth

coiling only five turns.

A shoddy job, he must have thought,

or perhaps his heart was not in it

or  he was tired

and placed it aside.

The ropes still needed testing, though.

He tied each noose to a tree limb

and a bag of buckshot,

then tossed the bag to the ground.

The ropes performed successfully

as they would the next day.

Stretched taut, the ropes held

All four lifeless bodies slowly swinging

in the sweltering heat of a July afternoon--

the coiled knot of the noose

underneath four white hoods

tight against each left ear.

Ekphrastic Poetry with Historic Photos

Ekphrastic Poetry with Historic Photos

AGENDA:

Work on poetry assignments and revising work in portfolio.  Select a poem for workshop on Monday and give it to Ms. Gamzon.

Ekphrastic Poem--Historic Photography
"The Buttonhook"
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/teach-poem

Find a photo that represents a moment in history.  Make a list of descriptive details.  What was that moment in history like?  How did the photo capture it?  Is that moment in history personally relevant?  Create a poem about the photo.

Some websites to explore:

http://www.boredpanda.com/historic-photos/

http://pulptastic.com/40-rare-historical-photographs-must-see/

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/

http://www.boredpanda.com/must-see-historic-moments/

ANNIE EDISON TAYLOR, THE FIRST PERSON TO SURVIVE GOING OVER NIAGARA FALLS IN A BARREL, 1901

Joy Harjo

AGENDA:

Interview with Joy Harjo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmtOpvRasOY

Poetry/Video/Workshops

AGENDA:

Think about Sokol and Gannon for poetry (and prose and presentation).

https://poets.org/text/poem-screenplay-six-video-collaborations

Workshop

Another contest

Naomi Shihab Nye is judging

https://wickpoetrycenter.submittable.com/submit/145883/call-for-poems-for-peace-and-conflict-transformation

https://www.ted.com/talks/suheir_hammad_poems_of_war_peace_women_power

White space poetry/ Erasure poetry

AGENDA:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/11/functional-white-crafting-space-silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIR21qrHmvQ

https://notesofoak.com/discover-literature/poetic-line-breaks-guide/


Erasure poetry:

https://twowritingteachers.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/screen-shot-2014-01-19-at-8-50-13-pm.png

125 poetry prompts/Workshop

AGENDA:

Poetry prompts:
https://writersrelief.com/2018/12/14/125-of-the-best-poetry-writing-prompts-for-poets-writers-relief/

WORKSHOP #1

Alberto Rios

December Morning in the Desert   Alberto Ríos

The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched, More cold than hungry, more numb than loud, This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets The coming edge of the winter world. It is a cold news in stark announcement, The myriad stars making bright the black, As if the sky itself had been snowed upon. But the stars—all those stars, Where does the sure noise of their hard work go? These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky, Their flickering work everywhere in a white vastness: We should hear the stars as a great roar Gathered from the moving of their billion parts, this great Hot rod skid of the Milky Way across the asphalt night, The assembled, moving glints and far-floating embers Risen from the hearth-fires of so many other worlds. Where does the noise of it all go If not into the ears, then hearts of the birds all around us, Their hearts beating so fast and their equally fast Wings and high songs, And the bees, too, with their lumbering hum, And the wasps and moths, the bats, and the dragonflies— None of them sure if any of this is going to work, This universe—we humans oblivious, Drinking coffee, not quite awake, calm and moving Into the slippers of our Monday mornings, Shivering because, we think, It’s a little cold out there.            Copyright © 2019 by Alberto Ríos. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 2, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   “Arizona is much in the news of late, as is my hometown, but they’ve both been conflated and renamed ‘the border.’ I wanted to write about the border but not the wall. Instead, I wanted to write about the full spectrum of borders that work to make this place a home—the distinction between evening and sunrise, spring and autumn, happiness and struggle. But more immediately, I wanted to convey the surprise of cold in the desert and even a perceived sense of Sonoran desert snow, the full stage of stars in the open range of deep night and immense sky—all borders, too, in this actual place, but which don’t get reported in the news.” —Alberto Ríos   Alberto Ríos’s forthcoming book is Not Go Away is My Name (Copper Canyon, 2020). A Chancellor of the Academy of American poets, he is director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University and lives in Chandler, Arizona.

Scholastic/Ghazals/American Sonnet

AGENDA:

Get Scholastic entries prepared and signed for tomorrow!

Continue to work on your ghazal.

American Sonnet:

Read Slate article about Terrance Hayes.  Check out links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDG51t_v7DI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY1GwVXV3Pk

https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/terrance-hayes-sonnet-poetry-stephanie-burt.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/143917/american-sonnet-for-my-past-and-future-assassin-598dc83c976f1

Wanda Coleman:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53318/american-sonnets-91

https://poets.org/poem/american-sonnet-35

Ghazal

AGENDA:

Try writing a ghazal:

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/ghazal.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ghazal

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49642/hip-hop-ghazal

http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/ghazal.htm

Work on Scholastic entries:

Senior portfolios?

Go to artandwriting.org


SOKOL:
https://ffrpl.libraryweb.org/sokol-contest-form/

Poetry Book Presentations

AGENDA:

Poet presentations

Poetry Book Presentation/Scholastic Senior Portfolio

AGENDA:

Period 1---Work on your Poetry Book review and presentation for Tuesday, 11/19

Scholastic contest entries!  Deadline Dec. 3

Tomorrow---Saturday of the Arts--if you are helping, arrive at 9:45 am

Poetry Workshop/Revision/Scholastic Entries

AGENDA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BUYzMypi8

How to Write a Review of a Poetry Book!

https://www.theclassroom.com/write-review-poetry-book-6916321.html

Couplets?

Quantum Foam   Elizabeth Jacobson

The air is close by the sea and the glow from the pink moon drapes low over a tamarind tree. We hold hands, walk across a road rushing with traffic  to an abandoned building site on the bay, look out across       the dark marina. Sea cows sleep by the side of a splintered dock, a cluster of them  under the shallow water, their wide backs covered in algae like mounds of bleached coral. Every few minutes one floats up for air,  then drifts back down to the bottom,  without fully waking.   They will do this for hours, and for a while we try to match  our breath to theirs, and with each other’s. In the morning, sitting in the garden beneath thatch palms,  we drink black coffee from white ceramic cups. Lizards killed by feral cats are scattered on the footpath. I sweep them into a pile with the ones from the night before.    Waves of heat rise from the asphalt,  and we sense a transparent gray fuzz lightly covering everything  as if there were no such thing as empty space,  that even a jar void of substance holds emptiness as if it were full.

Peer Review of Portfolios/Poetry book Presentation

AGENDA:

Select a poetry book to do a review and presentation to the class next marking period.

Using the handout, form groups of 3 to peer review and discuss your portfolios during class.

Workshop #2

AGENDA:

Let's workshop some poems!

Countdown Poem

Countdown as Slow Kisses   Michael Wasson

10. Here on my knees I look for the single animal: you left                                                           ravaged at the edge of a meadow 9. Is everything accounted for? The fingers dipped                                               beneath the torso—to keep this body bright 8. Every breath we are desperate to take                                sounds as if a war lost against a country of promise 7. Discarded halos: the light you remember                    in your head—you feed on what is crushed between the teeth 6. America declares these dreams I have every night be re-                                                                   dreamed & pressed into names 5. Upended petals of qém’es                                        abandoned like torn butterfly wings—we’é I pray 4. I pray that nobody                       ever hears us 3. An eye gone             bloodshot: I tear through the crisp apple of your throat & find— 2. myself: this—a boy beside a boy. An eyelash                             fallen at the base of a valley, our dark bones bursting in- 1. to bloom. I stare into your beloved face & enter: yes,                     yes, this nation, under god, its black sky we lay our                 nightmares to 0. where I am your animal: my Lamb—now eat                me alive.            Copyright © 2019 by Michael Wasson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 1, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "We are given these bodies—full of beauty, ache, and history—and are told to survive. We lean into joy and marvel, into our living, and yet we know that what we desire ultimately devours us. Might we surrender as we climax toward our gorgeous, unbearable ruin? This poem says yes." —Michael Wasson