'The Magic Box' by Kit Wright.

Write your own Magic Box poem!

via @DavidSherman

The Houseguest

Paired w/Rumi’s "The Guest House": Imagine a difficult emotion (frustration, fear, jealousy, etc) as a houseguest. What do they look like? How do they behave? What do they have to teach you?

via Joshua Zeitler

Resources.

The Poet Warriors Project has prompts and other resources for young writers.

Maya Jewell Zeller offers prompts!

Hayes & McKibbens

I also think the Golden Shovel form invented by Terrance Hayes is a great prompt because it pushes students to engage Gwendolyn Brooks’ work while creating an original piece.

I really love the nesting doll prompt by @RachelMcKibbens. It’s very simple, but generates very cathartic writing because of the way it compounds.

via @RonnieKStephens

The Brick.

They have to take a brick and pass it around the room. Each student, after holding it, has to say a word to describe the brick that the teacher would write on the board. After it had been passed around a few times and the students had run out of adjectives, the teacher then had the students write a description of the brick without using any of the words on the board. This would stump them for a bit, but then push them to metaphor and other literary techniques.

via ????

CAConrad.

All the prompts in CAConrad's A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon.

via @DavidSherman

Pain.

Write about what hurts.

via @DavidSherman

A recommendation.

Many recommend Joseph Fasano's prompts on Twitter.

A recommendation.

Imagine a person (real or not) and then imagine that person’s diametric opposite (real or not). Make them interact.

via American Dreams Records

Moon & Tide.

Anonymously pair your students so everyone has a partner. They will trade love poems, never knowing who their partner is until the last day. Poet A writes poem, Poet B reads it/writes response, Poet A reads/responds, etc

by Cynthia Belmont, Northland College, via Ash Fortier

Monster.

Picture a monster. Why are they a monster to you?

by Diane Frye, via Ari Macquarie

Negation.

Prompt: What can’t a poem be? List ten different things a poem cannot be. Then write a poem that attempts to be at least one or more of those things. (Eat A Persimmon by Carla Sofia Ferreira)

via Ra Avis

Letter.

This is the one l really like from my workshops: think of some dilemma that you struggle with and write a letter of advice or support to yourself from the perspective of your favorite tree, a fox you've seen on the foggy morning, your dog, or any non-human.

via Katrina Dybzynska

.

Take a page from a comic book, erase all the words in the word bubbles and then replace them with something else

via SINGAULDLANGSYNE

.

Ooh do get your young poets to enter our Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award! Deadline 31 July for ages 11-17 anywhere in the world. We have loads of writing ideas on our Young Poets Network https://foyleyoungpoets.org

via The Poetry Society

Lies.

Write a poem in which everything you say is a lie.

by Kenneth Koch, via Stephen Ira

False translations.

False translations are fun— have them write a poem translating a poem in a language they don’t know. Do ekphrastics w different types of music playing. Have them rewrite a poem in a different poet’s style. List poems using online wishlists or FB memories etc.

via Erin Lyndal Martin

Inhospitable environments.

Write a poem about a plant existing in an inhospitable environment.

via Edgar Kunz

Found poetry.

A friend wrote a prompt asking us to write a poem using only the words from individual Amazon product reviews. It was my introduction to found poetry and has spawned 100+ found poems (Woolf and Plath, not Amazon reviews) for me over the last ten years.

by Kenneth Koch, via Stephen Ira https://twitter.com/nafoopal Nazifa Islam

Ekphrasis.

I use art and paintings as prompts.. try to tell the story of the picture, or see what bubbles up in me as a response to it.

via The Cottage in the Wildwood

100 lines.

from Sabrina Orah Mark: write a 100 line piece. the challenge is wonderful. often we stop too soon. this forces us to dig deep and deeper.

by Sabrina Orah Mark, via @lgbodytalk

Guests.

Paired w/Rumi’s “The Guest House”—
Imagine a difficult emotion (frustration, fear, jealousy, etc) as a houseguest. What do they look like? How do they behave? What do they have to teach you? https://twitter.com/thejayestofzees

by Sabrina Orah Mark, via Joshua Zeitler

Kipple.

Kipple is the sinister debris that accumulates in human spaces when humans don't intervene. Scraps of paper, bits of dried skin, beard hairs and grease. Make a poem!

via Fritz Swanson

POV.

This is the one l really like from my workshops: think of some dilemma that you struggle with and write a letter of advice or support to yourself from the perspective of your favorite tree, a fox you've seen on the foggy morning, your dog, or any non-human.

by Katrina Dybzynska

Out in the rain.

Picture something you love - it could be a photograph or an object like a piece or jewelry or something someone made for you.
Now picture it out in the rain.

• - How does it change form?
• - use all of your senses
• - What does it look like a week from now? A year? 5 years? Does it still exist?
• - How do you feel about these changes? Grief? Fascination?
• - Does it change how you feel about the person who gifted it or the history around it?

Dream delivery.

A recommendation for Mathias Svalina!

Tiktok.

I saw a lot young people making TTs based on this prompt and they were all amazing: here

via Colleen Wilson