Category: tips from the bar

Tips from the Bar: So Much April, So Little Time

Tips from the Bar

In honor of the need for more poems for fast-approaching National Poetry Month (note: that’s April, and it’s never more than 11 months away), bartender Adam Stone offers two tips this week:

1. What’s in the back of your mind? The question, concept, or person that’s been bothering you? Get it on the page.

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Tips from the Bar: What Fresh Grocery Hell

Tips from the Bar

Wander your local supermarket (recommended: pick one where you don’t have to cross a picket line) and find a flavor you think is fucked up. Orange vanilla cola? Watermelon sandwich cookies? Cucumbers? Whatever: describe it. Now explain.

Tips from the Bar: Cellar Door Prompt

As part of Claudia Wilson’s workshop this evening, participants were asked to name their favorite word, or favorite word of the moment. A two-pronged prompt:

Use your favorite word of the moment to prompt a poem, but don’t use that word

or

Ask someone else for their favorite word, and write a poem that supports …

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Tip from the Bar: The George Abraham Prompt

Tips from the Bar

Simplified from George Abraham’s open-ended prompt at a recent workshop, after Hala Alyan‘s Wife in Reverse:

Write a poem where you manipulate time or space in some way; try to keep yourself from manipulating both.

Tips from the Bar: The Shane Koyczan Prompt

Tips from the Bar

Try answering this question from a Shane Koyczan poem:

When was the last time you knew everything was going to be okay?

Tips from the Bar: Crickets! Who Ordered Crickets!?

Tips from the Bar

A box comes to your door; you open it, and something floods out, in great quantity, too much for you or your living space. Do you try to save yourself? Hold back the tide? Salvage the contents of the box?

Tips from the Bar: Lease at Will

Tips from the Bar

Write an ad to get the roommate you think you deserve.

Tips from the Bar: We’ll Be Right Down

Tips from the Bar

Select a specific aspect of your personality for an event, outing, or night in. Now dress that part of yourself: in costume, drag, or daily wear.

Tips from the Bar: Inventors’ Club

Tips from the Bar

Throwback prompt from Adam Stone’s Crooked Treehouse:

Write about a female or non-binary inventor. If you are female or non-binary, write it however you wish. If you’re male-identified, then completely remove yourself from the poem. Don’t talk about how the female or non-binary inventor inspired you or changed your life or what her love …

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Tips from the Bar: Build a Better…

Tips from the Bar

Write the details of a complex trap to catch a human pest: a CEO, a telemarketer, or an online predator, for example.