Category: Poetry Prompts
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Contradiction Prompt
Begin a poem with a phrase that contains a contradiction, something like:
- Let me say it again: I never repeat myself.
- Deep down, you are really shallow.
- My brother is jealous of me because I am an only child.
- I don’t like any fish at all, but I like tuna and flounder.
Or, begin with an oxymoron, like:
- historical present
- seriously funny
- working vacation
- alone together
Once you have a contradictory statement or oxymoron that feels like a fruitful beginning for a poem, build on it by adding a narrative with plenty of concrete, sensory details.
In the process, be sure to move your narrative back and forth through time (past, present, future).
Conclude your poem with a declarative statement that states a fact, opinion, observation, or explanation using plain language.
Poem for Inspiration:
“What is Lost is Not Lost” by Peter Mladinic from Zingara Poetry Review, March 2021
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Utterance Prompt
Using Anaphora (phrase repeated at the beginning of successive clauses or lines), write a poem that also works as a speech act, that is, an utterance that performs an action, such as a request, promise or apology, rather than simply conveying information.
For a great example see “Ambidextrous” by Denise Low, Zingara Poetry Review
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Humor in Public Spaces
Write about a time, maybe recently, when an encounter with a stranger in a public space provided or resulted in humor, maybe a joke was told or one of you made an observational quip, apt pun, or there was a “pie-in-the-face” moment of physical comedy.
Poems for Inspiration:
“Permanence” by Denise Duhamel
“Dance in a Drugstore” by Anne Whitehouse
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Transformation Prompt
Make a list things in life that you find ugly, shameful, or repulsive–things like foot odor, rudeness, cockroaches, road kill, belching in public, etc.
Choose one or more items from your list to include in a poem.
For an extra challenge, see if you can transform something usually deemed ugly into something desirable, beautiful, and worthy of admiration.
Poems for inspiration:
“The Ugliest Girl in Christendom Goes to the Gynecologist” by Camille-Yvette Welsch
“Ugliness came up” by Kitty Jospé
“City of Bread” by Marc Janssen
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Absences Unfolded
Freewrite about absence, absenteeism, or absent things.
Start with real, ordinary absences, both abstract and concrete, then progressively larger absences, each growing in size and scope, even to the point of hyperbole, until you find an absence that feels larger than all other absences, larger than the world, larger than the universe.
Poems for Inspiration:
“What We Leave Behind” by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
“Song of Sorrow” by Jeremy Garnett
“My Sister’s Baby Blanket” by Alejandro Lucero
“Absencece by Inference” by Duane L. Herrmann
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Whispers of Work: A Lament for Extinct Professions
Write a poem about a profession which does not exist anymore or which is phasing out.
If you like, you can aim for an ode, a lament, a diatribe, a docu-poem, narrative poem, or found poem with your chosen profession as the central image, setting, or source.
Examples of extinct professions:
- ice cutter
- elevator operator
- milkman
- lamplighter
- switchboard operator
Examples of professions phasing away:
- farmer
- travel agent
- mason
- tailor
- literary translator
Professions at serious risk:
- teacher
- librarian
- journalist
- writer
For Inspiration:
“Barnwork We Didn’t Talk Much About” by Charles A. Swanson, Zingara Poetry Review
“Stay at Home Mom” by Sabina M. Säfsten, Zingara Poetry Review
“Fugitives” by Stephen Mead, Zingara Poetry Review
“The Milkman” by Isabella Gardner, Poetry Foundation
“London’s Summer Morning” by Mary Robinson, Poetry Foundation
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Beginnings Prompt
There are several websites who post poems by well-regarded literary poets on a daily basis, including Poets.Org, Poetry Foundation, and Verse Daily.
For today’s prompt, read poems posted for today on one or all three of these websites.
Select a first line of your choice to begin a poem of your own.
Once your poem draft is more or less complete, remove the first line and give your poem a new and unique title.
If you decide to keep the first line, just credit the poem and poet from which the line is borrowed with an epigraph. Something like “after Emily Dickinson.”
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Protection Prompt
What are you protecting?
What are you protecting yourself from?
What are you protecting your loved ones from?
Make a short list of items, people, parts of self, or conditions you feel you need to protect or to be protected from.
Next, select one or two items from your list, perhaps related, to write about.
Describe why protection is needed, then describe how you will protect the items, people, or condition you listed.
Sample poems from Zingara Poetry Review:
“Because I Like to Make My Mind Pretty the Way We’re Told to Make our Bodies Pretty, I Work at Thinking Beautiful Things” by Rebecca Macijeski, Zingara Poetry Review
“School Bus” by Michael Chin, Zingara Poetry Review
“Protection” by F.I. Goldhaber, Zingara Poetry Review
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Journal Splunking
Welcome to day #1 of the 2025 Poem a Day challenge. Your interest, your support, and your encouragement for the project are deeply appreciated. Please enjoy and, as always, happy writing!
Skim entries from old journals and diaries from a year or more ago jotting down interesting words, lines, phrases, sentences or images as you do so.
Don’t overthink — if something jumps out to you, it’s meant to be captured. Resist reading for context and meandering down memory lane.
The goal is to compile a page (or more) of fragments that still resonate emotionally but resist nostalgia and thwart typical associations or your own predictable writing patterns.
After letting your page of fragments “cool,” return a day or so late and write a poem from your compilation.
Poem for Inspiration:
“How I Arrived Here” by Karen Neuberg
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Poem a Day Challenge in April
The Zingara Project /Zingara Poetry Review is celebrating the end of its hiatus with a poetry prompt every day in April for National Poetry Month.
Writers are invited to write in response to as many or as few prompts as they like over the course of the month.
Beginning June 1, Zingara Poetry Review will open for submissions for poems inspired by one of the poetry prompts offered in April.
Submissions may be overtly related to a prompt, or have only a thread of connection. If you wrote a poem in response to a prompt and threw out all but one line during revision, that counts.
So come back each day in April for a new poetry prompt, spend some time in May revising your best drafts, and send 1-2 poems our way beginning in June.
Full submission guidelines and instructions will be posted on June 1.
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Woman, Please Poetry Prompt
From Washington State University, Fine Arts Page Since about the mid-twentieth century, feminists and historians have gradually, and, sometimes painfully, worked to restore the voices, images, and contributions of women and reinstating them, incrementally, into history and the literary canon.
While it’s long been understood that women are as instrumental as men in the making and destroying of empires, whether domestic or of a grand scale, their contributions have consistently been relegated to dark corners and back kitchens.
In time, perhaps women’s roles will be as obvious and as representative as those of men, and to that end, I offer today’s prompt, which incorporates two distinct approaches to poetry: ekphrasis and persona.
Ekphrasis, in simple terms, is a response to a piece of artwork. Contemporary poets often stretch this tradition to include popular culture, music, television, movies, and every day objects, in addition to traditional or contemporary art.
Persona, on the other hand, is stepping into another’s shoes and telling a story from their unique perspective. This approach takes a great deal of imagination and is often tweaked to fit a poem’s purpose.
You are probably familiar with the novel, Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which explores the untold stories of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, and Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, which reinvents the female subject of Vemeer’s painting of the same title. Both stories respond to existing works of art and both consider the perspective of withheld or otherwise down-played characters to create a compelling story.
For today’s prompt, consider works of art which were created by or feature women. Think expansively and include in your perusal everything from ancient art to modern Hulu favorites. Your piece of art may be a song, a hand crafted item, carefully prepared food, a character from mythology, or even an image as recognizable at the Mona Lisa. Don’t give up too easily; instead trust that you will know the right subject for your poem when you see it.
For further inspiration for today’s prompt, check out “Women Defending Castle With Bow and Crossbow” by Christine Stewart-Nuñez over at Verse Daily.
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Living Poetry Prompt
It’s amazing that we are here at all.
What I mean is, we human beings are a complex mix of resiliency and vulnerabilities. We take risks dashing across busy streets, regularly travel great distances over vast oceans in planes and boats, forget and leave the oven on, encounter dozens of harmful germs and bacteria while moving through our lives, and still manage do out best to help others every day. We survive heartache, bounce back from job terminations, mourn the death of loved ones, and still, on a whole, manage to get up every morning and, more or less, do it all again.
Maybe we deal with insomnia or indigestion, maybe our cholesterol is high and our metabolism is low, maybe we get depressed, and maybe we drink too much, but were’ alive, damn it, and as long as we are, we remain determined.
For today’s prompt, write a list of every near miss you’ve had in your life. Include the time that guy in the red Corvette DIDN’T hit you when he ran the red light, or the time you THOUGHT you were drowning but really just got water up your nose. Also include those near misses you don’t distinctly remember but which likely happened, like surviving 300 consecutive days of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles, or something like that. Get fantastical, get lyrical, and make your list long, true, doubtful, and outrageous.
Once you’ve compiled an impressive list of near misses, which may or may not have really occurred, use them as inspiration for a poem.
If you feel up to a challenge, include every singe item on your list, even though the resulting poem may feel contrived. It’s OK, you can always revise.
Otherwise, just pick and choose the most interesting, significant, or unusual instances on your list and use them as motivation to write your next AMAZING poem.
And don’t forget to revise.
When you’ve finished your draft, take a look at this finsihed poem by Laura Kasichke, which is all about “Near Misses.”
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Love, Maybe Poetry Prompt
Love is hard.Well, maybe not at first.
At first it’s all excitement and intense desire.
Fantasies and bliss.
Surrendering to pheromones and hormones.
Buying into the cultural ideal of soul mates,
and quieting insecurities.
But the day always arrives in which we view our lover, and they us, through lenses of a less rosy hue.
A time when we must discern between commitment and attraction, choice and devotion, judgment and acceptance, cute Habits and OCD, jokes and insults, and many, many moments of doubt amid general feelings of certainty.
For today’s prompt, spend 10 minutes freewriting about the early stages of love. Capture all the nuances of bliss that characterize those early feelings that so often are compared to a kind of temporary insanity. Include vivid descriptions of romantic interludes, devotional thoughts, and lusty dreams. No one will see this, so really and truly write freely. Don’t reread your freewrite until you have completed the next step.
Next, spend 10 minutes freewriting about the realities of living in a committed relationship. Your focus might include such details as kissing your partner despite garlic breath, or maybe how they tolerate your morning breath. It should also include the more difficult aspects of co-habitation, like basic cultural differences, fundamental disagreements about the way the world works, plans forgone for the sake of the relationship, or resentments that arise as a result of choosing love over your dreams.
Finally, read through your freewriting and highlight lines or images that can support a compelling poem then get to composing that compelling poem.
Remember, the difference between a journal entry (however compelling) and a poem is REVISION.
For an example of how one poet approaches this subject, take a look at “The Kama Sutra of Kindness, Position 3″ by Mary Mackey over at The Writers Almanac.
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If Poetry Prompt
Read “Bound” by Aline Murray Kilmer at Poets.org:
If I had loved you, soon, ah, soon I had lost you.
Had I been kind you had kissed me and gone your faithless way.
The kiss that I would not give is the kiss that your lips are holding:
Now you are mine forever, because of all I have cost you.You think that you are free and have given over your sighing,
You think that from my coldness your love has flown away:
But mine are the hands you shall dream that your own are holding,
And mine is the face you shall look for when you are dying.Write an eight line formal poem that begins with “If I had love you,”
OR
write an equally haunting poem that is concerned with war or loss.
The Zingara Project 