Author: Lisa Hase-Jackson

Use the Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope is the thing with feathers,” included below, as the main focus for a free writing exercise (writing without lifting your pencil or stopping to make corrections to grammar, spelling, capitalization, or punctuation, for a set period of time). Aim for 20 minute of continuous writing.

If helpful, you can center your freewrite on a specific image or line from the poem or expand on the larger abstract idea of hope itself.

Write quickly without overthinking, but keep your writing legible too (if handwriting).

The goal is to capture your inspired ideas as they arise. If the first few minutes are awkward, that’s okay. The good stuff is usually buried underneath those initial, oftan banal thoughts and concerns. Write PAST the “crap.”

After a day or so, return to your free-write and use it as basis for a new poem.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.

Poem for inspiration:

“Emily Dickinson May Be Weary” by Rikki Santer, Zingara Poetry Review