Tag: writing prompt

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 …

Continue reading

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: 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: The Kaveh Akbar Prompt

Tips from the Bar

From Kaveh Akbar’s Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Home Invader And Housefly (available in Calling a Wolf a Wolf):

…It can be difficult
telling the size of something
when it’s right above you — the average
cumulus cloud weighing as much
as eighty elephants.

Using very precise images, explain something seemingly …

Continue reading

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 …

Continue reading

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.

Tips from the Bar: Sure, By Its Cover

Tips from the Bar

Tell a story about a book you find on the street/in an airport/on the shelf of someone you don’t have much in common with.

Tips from the Bar: Oh, God, the Bees

Create an unlikely, non-violent personal security system to prevent people from invading your personal space.