Category: tips from the bar

Tips from the Bar: Something’s Missing

Tips from the Bar

Write a want ad for a vacancy in your body.

Tips from the Bar: The John Ashbery Prompt

Tips from the Bar

Write the narration track of a nature documentary for an animal with ennui.

Tips from the Bar: The Wanda Coleman Ghost Line Prompt

Tips from the Bar

Use what Rachel McKibbens calls a “ghost line” to begin your poem; select a line from another artist as a jumping off point for your piece. When you’re done, erase the first line to make the poem your own.

This week’s ghost line from the bar comes from Wanda Coleman’s Bathwater Wine:
“When …

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Tips from the Bar: Weekend Getaway

Tips from the Bar

Write about a place that makes you feel safe or happy.

Tips from the Bar: Date Night

Tips from the Bar

Discuss a time you took someone to a cultural event. Why did you take them there and how did it affect your relationship with them?

Tips from the Bar: What You Believe

In Phillip B. Williams’ important long poem, Witness, the poet’s grandfather is credited with the following line: you cannot love a god that you fear.

Do you believe that’s true or false? And how?

You can read Witness online in its entirety. Give yourself plenty of time, both to read and sit with it, and …

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Tips from the Bar: That’s Not What I Was Looking For

Tips from the Bar

Write a poem that incorporates:

1. The worst cover of a song you like.
2. Terrible advice from someone you love, and/or great advice from someone you don’t respect.

Tips from the Bar: Who Is That Even

Tips from the Bar

Write about an important haircut you have had: perhaps it was perfect, or traumatic. Think about the two different people you may have been before and after.

Tip from the Bar: The Gabrielle Bouliane Prompt

The Gabrielle Bouliane Prompt: tip from the bar for Wednesday, July 5, 2017.

Assume some form of reincarnation is real. What would like you like to come back as? What do you think other people believe you will come back as? What will the person you most love return as? Do you feel someone you love has already returned in another form?

Tips from the Bar: And That’s Why They Call It Greenland

Tip from the bar for Wednesday, June 28, 2017.

Write about a place you’ve always wanted to go, but write as if you’ve already been there. Act as if you are an expert on this place you’ve never been.