I'm just starting my second writing course based around writing prompts and this style really suits me. At the beginning of each week my mentor provides a lesson on a various theme and provides some poetic examples and then every day for that week she gives us a prompt and encourages us to write a poem from it.
Writing prompts can come in many different packages; generic or specific, questions, a theme, a list of words, a form (sonnet, haiku), first words. Not all prompts work for me first time, but I can usually write something for most of them. I also have books of writing practice prompts which I occasionally turn to.
This post will look at the various ways I approach a prompt and turn it into a poem. My teacher for this course likes a mixture of specific and general themes. As the course is based around autumn that's the general theme, but she also likes to focus us on a sense, a poetic style, a specific side of autumn or autumny situations we can use as material for our poems.
There, of course, is no pressure to stick exactly the theme or prompt. The idea of writing prompts is to kick start your creative juices. Show up everyday, have something to latch our minds to and hopefully we will be able to produce something - maybe only notes or a rough first draft, but sometimes a completed poem.
One thing I like to do is make lists of words that the prompt calls to mind, images, sensory details, notes on places and events. I recently made the list for a poem I was writing about an autumn day's event - charcoal cinders embers crackle singe burnt toast firepit sizzle pop - when trying to focus on the image of a fire. I wanted to use as many 'new' words to describe a fire as possible, so this was pushing me to branch out from the usual words of flame, flicker, etc. I used all of those words in my final poem.
I also do stream of consciousness writing where I just move from one image or idea to the next, not trying to shape anything. I may move off topic or fall down a rabbit hole of an idea, but if I keep pushing myself to write the next word I often end up with the basis of material I can then work further on. Sometimes I hit upon a line that actually leads me to the poem.
This is the stream of conscious writing I did in connection with the same theme above -
damp earth underfoot wet logs and leaves wet leaves smell of rainy dogs running muddy footprints through the house eyes warmed faces and knees burnt sugar of marshmallows toasted then singed popping skin of sausages juices sizzling drip down sticky fingers licked muddy boots wool itch the new years rises and falls like the wood smoke before our eyes stinging then clearing wood smoke lingers on wool jumpers
There's no punctuation, a few repeats, no attempt to write proper sentences or worry about where I was going. Very few of those words ended up in the poem. That last bit about wood smoke is the bit that linked me into the idea of the poem I eventually wrote. After that I began to write about the rain and going to the place, but eventually that was pared down as well.
Rarely a poem comes out fully-formed. One day I had the theme of 'weeds' and I wrote down a old teacher's surname and my mind just took off and I wrote three pages unhindered. It was the rough draft of the poem, very close to what I finished with after some tweaking. That's a nice feeling, but I'm not bothered if I have to spend more time drawing out a stubborn poem. I believe they can be just as strong as the first impression poems.
When I'm drawing a total blank I just write a series of words that will hopefully jump start a memory or an idea. A prompt about keys had me writing house key, shed key, plot key, car key, suitcase key, journal key until I stumbled upon what to write about, though I'm still not sure about it.
Sometimes I need to do a bit of research, our themes have often had specific events or places or objects connected to them, so I need to get a feel for an ancient site or a mythical being I don't have knowledge of. I read a couple of articles and take a few notes and then try and move on as fast as possible. It's easy to sucked into the gravity of internet research, but it's better to be writing. I also want my poems to reflect my take on a subject, not Wiki's.
Unless you are following competition instructions, it's perfectly fine to wander off topic. I've avoided rhymes or not written proper haiku or veered way past a subject when my writing took me in a different direction. And my poems were better for it, rather than forced into uncomfortable moulds.
Since I've started doing these prompt courses I've been able to write the rough draft of a poem in one day. The process of sitting down daily to a prompt works for me, maybe not every day, but enough that I have churned out some decent work. Two of my poems from my last month-long course have just been accepted for publication, so they're not too bad, I guess.
