Category: tips from the bar

Consider a work-related nightmare (the waking or dreaming kind). Revise it to fit your own needs.

Create an obscenity based on something you love, but hate that you love.

Take on an event from pop culture, or in your own life, in the voice of an unusual perspective. (Adam’s example: the boom box from Say Anything.)

Find a story about your favorite celebrity or fictional character acting out of character: a sincere celebrity being funny, or Eeyore dancing the Macarena, etc. Explain why it happened. Your explanation does not have to be real, only as true as you can make it.

Write a rejection letter for a condition or event that you politely decline to acknowledge as acceptable in your life.

Bartender Adam Stone may be on vacation, but he’s still working on prompts so you can work on poems:

Use a scientific fact that can be broadly explained in one sentences as the basis for a three minute folktale.

The petty revenge prompt: write a very specific non-violent revenge fantasy that you are unlikely to actually follow through on.

Did you ever dream of having a pet your parents wouldn’t allow? Did you actually try it (or know someone who did)? Start your poem with the story of your secret animal friend.