Wayward: following one's own capricious, wanton, or depraved inclinations : ungovernable - Merriam-Webster
Dear friends,
I often feel a bit frazzled and disconnected from the page and my inner life during the summer. But this weekend, I had the chance to go on a short retreat in Vermont and there I managed to dive back into a poetry project I’ve been circling for a couple years and make some real progress on it. It feels goooood.
So this week, I’m offering some prompts to get you back to writing if you’ve been taking a little hiatus, and if you’re too busy enjoying the bees and the trees, then just save these prompts for another day!
Write a poem…
that refuses to be nostalgic while using the materials of nostalgia: (examples: pool chlorine, cut grass, screen doors, melted popsicles, lightning bugs, cassette tapes, sunburn)
where the central emotional event happens offstage and can only be inferred
composed of overheard summer language: pool rules, weather warnings, roadside signs, family arguments, tourist instructions, casual flirtations
where heat distorts time and/or space
where the natural world is not a metaphor for the human self
that uses one luxurious image and one brutal fact
that ends before the reader is ready
New England on film by Alix Klingenberg
Write poems…
as marginalia
in the form of a weather advisory
in couplets where each second line somehow contradicts the first
using only declarative sentences, but let reality become more and more unstable
where each line contains a color
that begin as a description of something you see everyday
Choose one summer image and follow it way beyond its original meaning
Write a poem that uses metaphor badly on purpose
Write a poem in which every image is tactile
Write a poem that lets an image repeat three times, changing its meaning each time
Write a poem of poem titles
Write in the voice of someone who is trying to sound casual
Write a poem where the speaker wants to confess, but something prevents them
Write a poem where the “I” appears only once
Write a poem addressed to the reader
Write a poem where the speaker has a secret they won’t reveal
Read a poem you envy and make a list of how it moves
Borrow a poem’s structure, but choose a subject that resists that structure
Choose a line from a poem you wrote years ago and write further and further away from that poem
Read one contemporary poem and one ancient text, then write a poem that lets them converse together
Submit one poem before you can talk yourself out of it
Read a poem aloud to someone and notice where your voice falters or wants to change things as you speak
Ask a trusted reader what the poem seems to know that the reader does not.
Choose one poem from your notebook and take the next step with it: revision, submission, publication, or performance.
Share one poem in the comments below
Coming up on Saturday, July 25th at 11am, I’m hosting a FREE writing workshop for all subscribers! Click through below to register and make sure you’re subscribed to Earth & Verse (not just following)
Tune into your own frequency: a free writing workshop on July 25th, 11am Eastern
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Jul 12
I once told a writing group that Mary Oliver was my favorite poet. This was not the right answer to the question in that room, but it was, and still is, true. Mary was a genius, a queer woman, a brilliant, kind, weird, introverted woman. And I believe her secret power was to make it all seem easy, when it was not.
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