April is quite the month for writers! Not only is it the first Camp NaNoWriMo session of the year, but it’s also National Poetry Month!
We have focused primarily on writing fiction on this blog, but we’d argue that any and every writer should engage in exercising the poetry-writing muscles every once in a while. (You might just see a blog post on this soon…) This month, we’ll be sharing thirty prompts provided by poet, editor, author, and more Heather Lang-Cassera to help you get in touch with your poetic side. We’ve also included a few ways you could use the prompt if you’re feeling stuck.
Prompt #16: Ask someone to send you ten random emojis. Translate them into words, then use those words to write a poem.
- Emojis frequently take on lives of their own. The rocket emoji is now heavily associated with startups, and the information desk person is now the universally-accepted symbol for sassiness. ?
- Some of those emojis are a little—let’s call them vague. If you need help figuring out what you’re looking at, check out the Emojipedia!
Prompt #17: Open, or re-open Instagram. Scroll down to the third post in your feed. Use the second word of the caption in a short poem.
- If you happen upon a common word—the or and or to—feel free to refresh your feed for more of a challenge.
- Instagram has multiple feeds! If you’re having no luck with your home feed, try the Discover or Reels feed.
Prompt #18: Think of the best or worst advice you’ve ever received. Write a poem about it.
- If you’re looking for bonus points—or if you’re feeling particularly inspired—write two poems, one for the best advice you’ve ever received and one for the worst advice.
- Alternatively, is there a way you could write both pieces of advice into the same poem?
Prompt #19: What is something you have thrown away? Recycle that item, figuratively speaking, into a poem.
- Amazing what a quick glance into your trash can will inspire, isn’t it? Food waste can be ripe with potential metaphors (pun intended), and do I even need to mention broken glass?
- Take the recycling part literally! Your junk mail might make for great blackout poetry fodder.
- If your memory is failing you (and you just took out the trash), think about that last place you went, and what might’ve been thrown away there.
Prompt #20: Read about your favorite planet, then write about it in detail. Never mention the planet’s name.
- Whether Pluto counts or not is up to the writer’s discretion.
- Feeling stuck? All of the planets in our solar system were named after characters in mythology. Let their myths inspire you.
- Don’t be afraid to look outside of our solar system! Wikipedia has many lists of planets for you!
Prompt #21: Research a poetic form (pantoum, ghazal, sonnet, tanka, villanelle, etc.) that you’ve been wanting to practice. Read about it, and dive in!
- If you typically work within a certain structure, try playing it fast and loose with structure instead.
Prompt #22: Look up at the night sky. Make your own constellation. Write the origin story.
- Are you reading this list in the daytime, or live in a place with lots of light pollution? Here is a tool to let you see what the night sky would look like from where you are.
- But don’t limit yourself to your own sky! Using that same tool, you could enter the zip code of somewhere you’ve always wanted to go and see what the stars from there have to show you.
- Pair this prompt with an art project: break out the markers or colored pencils and draw the constellation on a sheet of paper, or use a free program like Canva or Google Drawings. You don’t want to forget what your constellation looks like!
Prompt #23: Revise a poem you’ve already written by flipping it upside down. The last line will become the first line, and the first line will become the last.
- Of course, if you’ve been following along the entire month, you’ve got twenty recently-written poems to choose from, but you don’t have to use any of those. Instead, try revising the earliest poem you can find.
- Alternatively, if you’ve submitted your poetry to literary journals in the past, go searching through your inbox for one that previously wasn’t selected—or that you decided not to submit after all—and revise that one instead.
- By the way, have we mentioned recently that Black Fox is open for submissions?
Prompt #24: Look at your most recent shopping list. Include at least three of the items in a poem.
- Perhaps you thought of grocery shopping lists first, but we don’t only make shopping lists for groceries. Your clothing shopping lists and you wish lists count, too!
- Do you not make lists? Look at your most recent receipt instead. Some retailers’ apps like Target save your past purchases, so even if you can’t find the physical receipt, you might still be able to find a digital copy.
Prompt #25: Think of two separate things you’ve never done (e.g., skydiving and holding an octopus). Write about each one, and then weave them together into one poem.
- We love the contrast of air (skydiving) and sea (octopus) in this prompt! If you need help thinking of two things you’ve never done, try picking two opposite ends of a spectrum or two opposing elements and brainstorming for five minutes to see what you could come up with.
- If you’d like to make this more interesting, consider making one or both things something you have no intention whatsoever of doing.
About Heather Lang-Cassera
Heather Lang-Cassera lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where she served as Clark County Poet Laureate (2019-2021) and was named 2017 “Best Local Writer or Poet” by the readers of Nevada Public Radio’s Desert Companion. Heather holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a Graduate Certificate in Literary Translation. She serves as an Editor for Tolsun Books and World Literature Editor for The Literary Review. Her chapbook, I was the girl with the moon-shaped face, was published by Zeitgeist Press. Her collection, Gathering Broken Light, was published by Unsolicited Press. At Nevada State College, Heather teaches College Success, Composition, and Creative Writing. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter and find out more via her website.
