Category Archives: Writing Prompt

Refrigerator, 1957

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To help me get back into writing, I got out 52. Write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going. The book originated in the 52 Project by Jo Bell and guest poets. I opened it at random and got to Prompt No. 15 titled Bell, Book and Candle. This is a prompt on writing about the unnoticed object.

The second sample poem Refrigerator, 1957 is by the American poet Thomas Lux. As synchronicity would have it, today is the first anniversary of his death. He was born in 1946 on the dairy farm his father owned. On poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, I watched a short video In Memoriam 2017 which had a picture and a short quote by each of the US poets who died last year.

Adding that date to an ordinary object already makes it less ordinary. It tells us the perspective is that of an eleven-year old boy. More like a vault – you pull the handle out it starts. There is humour: not a place to go in hope or hunger. Then the poem zooms in, heart red, sexual red, neon red, on that jar of Maraschino cherries. The same jar there through a childhood of dull dinners… Then we go down the timeline to grandparents, pig farm in Bohemia. The poem ends and because you do not eat/ that which rips your heart with joy.

 

 

 

 

 

14 Ways to Write an Ekphrastic Poem

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You will find this interesting and useful article on the website of the poet Martyn Crucefix.  He gives examples of poems under each of the 14 headings.  I came across the article just the other week, timely as I’m doing a Poetry School course held at the Manchester Art Gallery.

Martyn has divided these 14 ways into five subgroups:- Through Description, Through Ventriloquism, Through Interrogation, Through Giving an Account and, finally, Come At a Tangent.  He suggests people try to write one a day for the next fortnight.

I doubt I’ll manage one a day, but I’ve taken heart from the article: I have lots of abandoned ekphrastic poems, because one tutor was adamant that such poems have no merit if they merely describe!

World Poetry Day

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I ran away to sea many years ago.  In 1969 I arrived in London as an economic migrant and went to register with the “Aliens Office”.  P&O Lines Ltd had offered me a job as a WAP (Woman Assistant Purser) and I joined my first ship, the Arcadia.  The small flags on my blue uniform jacket and white dresses showed that I could speak Dutch, French and German to all the European passengers who were going to start a new life in Australia and New Zealand.

The haiku below was first published in the 2004 Members’ Anthology of the British Haiku Society.  The theme that year was “Other”.

down on the quayside

the band playing; their faces

already smaller

Happy World Poetry Day!

 

Joan – writing prompt

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To honour International Women’s Day I’m posting this poem about a woman.  It was first published in The Best of Manchester Poets, vol. 2, published by Puppywolf (2011).  I aimed to give the reader enough clues (the Gauloises cigarettes, the stubborn streak) for them to be able to guess the identity of this woman before they read the final lines.

Writing prompt

It’s a good prompt: with which historical figure (famous or infamous) could you have gone to school, college, university with?  Did you even sit next to them in the classroom?  What were they like then?

Joan
One of the girls I went to college with
was Joan who’d left home early.
She smoked Gauloises, had a stubborn
streak, wanted to study philosophy.
We thought she was depressed; she cut
herself and once put out a cigarette on her arm.
I wish I’d asked her why.  I can see her now
with that hair cropped short, staring straight ahead.
People shouting, the smoke, the crackling fire.
Too hot, I need to step back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paterson

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During the Christmas holidays I went to see Paterson, the delightful film about a bus driver who writes poems.  The poems in the film are by the New York poet Ron Padgett.  Back home I found his work in the New York Poets II Anthology, including the Love Poem that Paterson writes in the film.  The first line is: We have plenty of matches in our house. 

Paterson is also the title of a long poem by William Carlos Williams, so I re-read him.  Seeing Paterson sit in his bus scribbling away each morning before he drives off for the day reminded me of another American poet, William Stafford.  He wrote a poem each day, starting with a brief description of the weather, then a short aphorism, then a poem.  I believe his “hit rate” for acceptances was 1 : 7, or 1: 8.  I’ll settle for that!

May you have a healthy, happy and creative year.  If you’re short on inspiration, you can always write about the matches in your house.  Over Christmas I used up a couple of boxes of good old “Svalan” from Sweden.  Now I’ m on “Flix” from the Netherlands.  The packaging is modern, but the tips are brown…

The Snail – writing prompt

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I’m planning to get the 10.41 to Liverpool Lime Street. I’m on the single-decker blue Magic bus, with the bright orange bars and handles inside. We’re crawling through the Curry Mile – with the newly completed cycle lanes and a few badly parked cars, the buses have to manoeuvre; even the walkers are catching up with us.

white petals float
towards the shisha bar
sleeveless cyclists

The Liver birds are shimmering, a salt tang, ice cream sellers and flocks of French pupils draped around the dock. The Tate opened late this morning. A friendly guide – grey curly hair, faded lilac shirt – directs me to the first floor.

On one side of The Snail four bronzes: a backbone has become an “abstracted plait”. In fuzzy black-and-white film Matisse points with a walking stick to where the next piece of cut-out should be attached. The Snail’s alternative title is Chromatic Composition. Apparently it was planned as part of a triptych, this “purified sign for a shell”. The pin holes are visible in the brightly coloured paper.

Photo credit: Alexas_Fotos via Pixabay

In a traditional saijiki (list of kigo, or season words) the snail is linked to summer and that fits with these colours: orange, lilac, greens, blue. My own saijiki is Haiku World: an International Poetry Almanac compiled by the late William Higginson. It’s a unique anthology: over a thousand haiku, from more than six hundred poets, living in fifty countries, writing in twenty-five languages. At 400 yellowing pages it’s too heavy to carry around.

The snail is caracol in Spanish, slak in Dutch/Afrikaans and katatsumuri in Japanese. The Spanish word sounds like the shape of the protective shell and katatsumuri is, perhaps, the non-moving or slow moving, the snail stuck to the window. Many years ago I had a Korean manager lodge with me at Norwood Rd. He and his colleagues were learning English at the Business School. Smoking he paced through the rear garden, saw me sprinkle blue pellets…Miss Fokkina, you nourish the snails?