Poetry Prompts

Hello everyone!! I just wanted to let you guys know that being stuck in writer's block DOES suck, but you won't be in it forever!! I promise. I know the feeling. I really do. So I decided to put together a small list of poetry prompts if you are struggling to find inspiration for your writing.

• random piece of art by my friend Avery

1. Golden Shovel Poem

First, we have the golden shovel poem. A Golden Shovel Poem is when you take an already existing poem and make each word in the poem the last word of each line in a new poem. I don't know if that made any sense to you because it's difficult to explain, so I will insert an example below.

The Golden Shovel

by Terrance Hayes

I. 1981

When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we

cruise at twilight until we find the place the real

men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.

His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we

drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left

in them but approachlessness. This is a school

I do not know yet. But the cue sticks mean we

are rubbed by light, smooth as wood, the lurk

of smoke thinned to song. We won’t be out late.

Standing in the middle of the street last night we

watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike

his son in the face. A shadow knocked straight

Da promised to leave me everything: the shovel we

used to bury the dog, the words he loved to sing

his rusted pistol, his squeaky Bible, his sin.

The boy’s sneakers were light on the road. We

watched him run to us looking wounded and thin.

He’d been caught lying or drinking his father’s gin.

He’d been defending his ma, trying to be a man. We

stood in the road, and my father talked about jazz,

how sometimes a tune is born of outrage. By June

the boy would be locked upstate. That night we

got down on our knees in my room. If I should die

before I wake. Da said to me, it will be too soon.

Do you see how if you read the last word of every line it reads the poem "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks? Yeah. That's basically it. Make sure not to choose a poem that's too long though, because that could end up being a lottt of writing.

2. Grandma's Kitchen Poem

A grandma's kitchen poem is fairly simple. So what you want to do a focus on a specific memory, it can be fairly recent or from your childhood, whenever, and just try to remember every small detail of that moment. As you picture this memory, try to think of what you see, what you smell, what you feel, everything. Then, try to write it down into a poem, using extremely descriptive imagery. And there you have it!

3. 6-word poem

This is probably the most simple prompt you will see on this list. Basically, try to tell a story in just 6 words! Once you do that, you can always try to expand off of those 6 words and write an even longer poem.

4. Goodbye poem

Write a poem about a time when you lost someone close to you and had to say goodbye, BUT this does not always have mean death. This could just be you saying goodbye to your friend after hanging out with them. Literally any goodbye, ever.

5. Inspiring Day poem

Write about a day that changed your life - whether that change is big or small. What happened, how did this affect your life? Just write it all out.

6. Narrative poem

Try to tell a story through a poem. It can be about anything, and it can be as long or short as you want. Try to use vivid imagery and be as descriptive as possible, really make the story come to life through this poem.

Those are all the prompts I have for today! I hope you enjoyed them and will use them to your best ability :) also, COMMENT IF YOU WANT MORE OF THESE PROMPTS!! I literally have an endless amount of them.

Feel free to share the poems you wrote from these prompts in the comment section or in the discussion forum called "Share Your Poetry".