Tag Archives: Writing Exercise

Friday Poetry Prompt

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Riffle through your old poems and pull from them a poem that has yet to find a home. Perhaps it isn’t quite finished or perhaps it is different thematically from your other work. Experiment with this poem in one, or all, of the following ways:

Write a “part two” to the poem.

Arbitrarily rearrange the words, lines and stanzas on the field of the page based on some principle that you invent. For example, perhaps words beginning with a particular letter are flush with the left margin while words beginning with a different letter are always indented so many spaces from the left margin. Maybe nouns contain extra spaces or are centered. Use your imagination.

Cut your poem up and rearrange its words. Paste the new onto a colorful piece of paper.

Most of all, enjoy the process. And feel free to post your results in the comments area below.

The Epistolary Poem

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This past July I participated in an email based “poem-a-thon”  activity facilitated by my good friend Juan Morales. The following prompt is one I particularly enjoyed and am now passing on to you (with Juan’s blessings).

Write An Epistle to Someone Who Inspires

Below, is a description of the epistle form from the PoeWar website (http://www.poewar.com/poetry-in-forms-series-epistle/):

Epistle (pronounced e-PISS-ul) is a poetic form that dates back to ancient Rome and to the Bible. It is a poem written in the form of a letter. The term epistle comes from the Latin word epistola, which means letter. It was used to express love, philosophy, religion and
morality.

Most people who think of epistles think of the Bible. Many of the books in the New Testament are epistles, especially the Epistles of St. Paul. The poet Robert Burns also frequently wrote epistles, as did Alexander Pope.

Over the past hundred years, as the telephone took over for letter writing, letters became less personal and more formal or business related. The concept of writing letters to relatives, friends,colleagues and lovers went out of fashion. In the last few years,
however, letter writing has had a rebirth of sorts as the Internet grew in prominence and people began to send e-mail to each other.

There are no meter or rhyme requirements for an epistle. Epistle is more a form of voice and persona. A poet can address their epistle to a real or imaginary person and express their views or take on the character of a different writer. The wonderful quality of an epistle is that it can be such a freeing form. The tone can be formal or use very personalized voices. The poems can be many pages long or as short as a post card.

Some things you should keep in mind when writing the epistle are who is writing the letter, who is the letter being written to, and how you would address that person. What would interest the writer and the recipient? How formal or informal would the writer be when addressing that person?

Share your epistle in the comments section below.

Writing Exercise: Map

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Draw a map of a familiar location that you either physically survey or remember vividly.  Bear in mind that in addition to highlighting relationships among concrete elements of space, your map can diagram emotional relationships and connections among remembered events and other themes. Mark the places where important events occurred or where interesting, memorable objects are located. Allow reverie and nostalgia to guide your train of thought.

When finished making your map, reflect upon what it has been revealed to you and choose a moment, location or object to write about.  Use the resulting image as the basis for a story, poem or essay. Feel free to share it in the comments section below.

And most of all, have fun.

Poetry Prompt: April Fools

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“The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
~William Shakespeare

For this the first day of April, otherwise known as April Fool’s Day, write a foolish poem. Feel free to interpret this prompt broadly. For example, perhaps for you a foolish poems suggests writing about a past foolish endeavor, a foolish game or plan, or perhaps it simply  suggests utilizing foolish language and silly words. Alternately, maybe it suggests writing about fools, and there are many of those from which to choose. There is the quintessential court jester, the fool in love, the foolish student, any number of fools (or foils) in Shakespeare’s works, even the foolish raven (fox, cat, frog…) of Aesop’s fables. If none of these strike your fancy, consider writing a poem about the origins of April Fools, which is vague enough to encourage fanciful (foolish) interpretation.

Newest Abcedarian Story: “The Ant and The Bee” (as Written by Chung Dahm Students)

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Thursday was the last night for my Comp. 100 class, and as is often my habit, I had my students write an “abcedarian” story (though abcedarian is usually a poetry exercise  rather than a short story exercise). Each student begins a story by writing a sentence beginning with the letter “a.” The paper is then passed to the next student, whose next, somewhat cohesive sentence, should begin with the letter “b,” and so forth until either time runs out or the letter “z” is reached. Sometimes a letter or two may get skipped until all the students get the hang of it, but generally they catch on pretty quick.  I also like to sit in on the circle and add a few sentences. Stories are titled after they are written.

It’s always interesting to see how students approach this exercise.  Last term’s Comp. 100 class really labored over each and every sentence and were  genuinely amused by the results. This term’s students, while no less serious, seemed to approach the exercise with efficiency. As a result, their stories were a little longer (we got to “v” this term while last term we only got to “t”), but no less amusing.

Here is this term’s winning story (based on student votes):

“The Ant and the Bee”

An ant is moving up a hill. But the ant wanted to fly to the sky when it went to the top of a hill. Carelessly, he jumped, flapping his arms. Directly, he jumped to another hill, where he found another ant trying to fly. Elephants could be seen in the distance.

“Failure isn’t in my dictionary!” he cried out before he fell into the middle of the forest.

Gorilla was searching for food in the forest, saw the ant flying toward him and shouted “flying ant!” Horrified, the gorilla ran away screaming “I’ve never seen a jumping ant…I must be crazy!”

I don’t know why that gorilla is running away”  the ant said. “Just because of little old me?” the ant wondered. Knowing that his energy was consumed, the ant decided to explore the jungle, but he heard people shouting about jelly and eggs.

“Lovely…I want to taste them a little…should I?” the ant wondered. Mostly without thinking one more second about it, the ant followed the smell.

“No!” someone shouted  quickly, “it is trap of humans!”

On top of the flower, there was something small saying something.

“Please, please, someone help me!” a bee said.

“Quite down so I can concentrate…how can I get up this flower?” the ant said.

“Really easy! Fly!” the bee kept suggesting.

Something caught up in his mind. “To me to fly? No. I can’t, it was just a jump” the ant said honestly.Unless…what can I do?”

Vanity never gets you anywhere.

The Earthquake Affair: Another Abecedarian Story by Chung Dahm Students (South Korea)

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Here is a story my Comp. 100 class and I composed using the exquisite corpse writing prompt our last night of class. Starting with the letter “A,” each new sentence must begin with the next letter in the alphabet. There must also be an attempt at cohesion in the story. All together, we composed four stories. This was voted as best. (Remember, these are middle school aged ESL students.) I’ve copied it verbatim here:

Again and again the children asked their mother to push them on the swings. But their mother, her belly holding yet another child, shook her head, her face white. Children started to find out where their father had gone. Dad was in restaurant with his secret girlfriend. Every other day, he met this secret girlfriend for lunch at this favorite restaurant.

“Father!” the children cried in unison when they saw him – one with a shocked face. Girlfriend also stared at the children and asked father “Is they are your kids? Why are they calling you father?”

“Ha ha ha,” they are not my kids, they are kids who live in my town.”

“I am your son! I am your first son,” the boy cried, his tears streaking his cheeks and rushed home.

John, the first son, went home and surprised by strange man sit closely with mom.

“Kelly, I really think you should tell your husband we’re dating. I mean, look at OUR baby!”

“Listen to me, we can’t let anyone know about our love-child NOW!” Mom whispered and John the son hide behind the sofa, was so shocked that he cried

“NO, it can’t be – Mom and dad BOTH can’t both be having an affair! “Oh my god, what did you mean that both me an your father having affair?” Mom shouted.

“Please tell me it isn’t so!” she wailed. “Quickly, hide Luke!” she said to her boyfriend when she saw her husband coming.

“Really, I can’t believe this situation! I heard all things! How can you have affair” said father.

Suddenly the ground began to shake and rumble.

To be continued…

——-

We ran out of time before we ran out of alphabet. But we didn’t run out of fun!