Your grandmother explains the person you’ve become to your mother.
Tag: writing prompt
Tips from the Bar: Trying Too Hard
Choose an utterly mundane activity (brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, etc.). Overwrite it as “poetically” as possible.
Tips from the Bar: Never Meant to Be
Write in the voice of a favorite hobby, movie, fantasy world, or other counter/culture that you love– where it explains why it doesn’t love you back.
Tips from the Bar: “Sure, Try Irony”
Use the following title to spark your poem:
It Was a Beautiful Day and Nothing Was Wrong
Tips from the Bar: The xkcd Prompt
A la William Safire: produce a speech for an event that never happened.
Tips from the Bar: You Went Over Time and Time Has Things to Say About It
A welcome-back present from bartender Adam to himself: an appropriately snarky prompt. Try a poem where the clock talks trash about your inability to keep your mouth shut.
Tips from the Bar: There’s No Place Like Home
Adam Stone returns, bitterly from a national tour and offers the following prompt:
The Hypochondriac Explains the Universe to a Privileged Person
Tips from the Bar: The Vulture Prompt
A “ghost line” (per Rachel McKibbens) is a line you use to prompt or inform a poem, but erase from your work at the end. You can use a ghost line of your own devising, from daily life, or borrow one from another artist.
Try starting your poem with a ghost line: delete it …
Tips from the Bar: Emily O’s Debut
Write about one of your personal hells.
Tips from the Bar: The Brian S. Ellis Prompt
From the news: someone has destroyed a famous work of art by punching it. You are in charge of restoring the piece. What do you do?
Or, from Brian: what piece of art would YOU punch?
Boston Poetry Slam Online