Playing with Plentiful Poetry Prompts

Thanks to some great Medium publications

Lately, I have been writing poetry daily, thanks to some evocative prompts on two amazing sites — The Bad Influence and The Chalkboard. But I’m also published on Dead Poets Live and No Crime in Rhymin.’ Not to mention silly couplets and limericks on the satirical pub, MuddyUm.

The Bad Influence (TBI) is not solely a poetry publication. But it has a tab/series called IdeaStream. It’s a page full of prompts — a list of fascinating and quirky characters to combine in a scene, a list of topics to mash up two or more in a single piece, and a list of ten words to use in a poem called Salvage Poetry.

Let me put in a plug for prompts. Given I try to post one or more pieces daily, it’s easy for my brain to dry up. Prompts are the cool drink of water that gets my creative juices flowing again. Usually, in a brand new direction, I would never have come to on my own. I can practically feel the synapses in my neocortex jumping lanes to connect with each other.

That is essentially what creativity is — making connections between unlikely things, people, events. So, as I told the editor, Xavier Van Holde, I consider my pieces a collaboration. In a short poem of 30–50 words, the ten he suggests with are a significant percent.

I would not be going down that particular road, literally speaking, without those words. I’d be writing a process article like this one — which may or may not be nearly as exciting!

It’s those ten salvage words that have my attention of late. Xavier comes up with them. Sometimes they sorta, kinda relate, making my job easier. Sometimes they’re rather obscure, from a listicle about certain kinds of arcane words, say related to travel, for instance. It’s fun to make a game of using these obscure or miscellaneous words in a poem. Some of them even rhyme.

How I work:

I literally stare at the list till the words start moving around and connecting with each other and/or suggest a theme or topic. Often this happens quickly. Or seems to.

But I have read through the lists several times already, so they may be dancing together in the disco of my subconscious before surfacing in the partnerships they end up in. For this, I am grateful.

Once the topic is clear, I start writing. I go through it two or three times and also put it up on Grammerly.com before posting. I love pasting my work into Grammarly and then filing out the goals sheet and checking my score. I note the before and after — always aiming for 90 or higher.

Interestingly, my poems score higher than my prose — go figure. Even when it tells me to change the salvage words, which, of course, is a no-no. Interestingly, this piece came in with a score of 97.

Sometimes the title takes as long to create as the poem. Sometimes the title comes first. Once I have the title, and it’s been through Grammarly, I put the new post up on Medium.

The last part of posting is finding the photo. Sometimes that can take the longest, but it’s fun. I am fairly fussy and rarely use on-the-nose photos unless that seems the best way to go. I like the photos to evoke a certain mood that harmonizes with the poem rather than merely illustrative. I like the picture to convey an element not already in the poem, if possible.

One of my recent favorites is Try this for a Pick-Up Line. Only after I imported the photo did I realize it was of two women. And this is a poem that poo-poos anti-natalism (one of the prompt words) and ends by saying, let’s have lots of unprotected sex. I went back to the drawing board, but nothing was as delightfully expressive in the kissing category as that one. So I kept it.

I mention in the comments that there was a turkey baster just to the left of the camera frame, tightly wrapped so as not to get covered with sand the way the naked women are! I had to justify my photo choice, after all.

As of this writing, TBI is up to 40 IdeaStreams. I came in at №17, so I can move backward or forwards or both. I may never catch up, but I’m having a blast trying. One thing I’ve noticed is, if a particular list doesn’t speak to me at one point, often when I return later, an idea pops. I’m learning patience with the process.

The Chalkboard

Kathy Jacobs’s publication, The Chalkboard, is a showcase for the one-line poem. The short, short poem of up to 15 words is called a Chalkboard Espresso. The “longer” short poems, 16 to 30 words, are the one-liners. New prompts are posted weekly.

When I write these, I am looking for a hook or a twist on the obvious. Something a little off from what’s predictable. Given the brevity, I have to write with haiku precision, and that’s the game of it I love.

The other aspect of the game is compression, compression, compression. I work in Word, so I have the word count right there. If I am over 30, I might put a keyword in the title, which, as far as I know, has no word limits.

There’s a delicate tango going on between a poem and its title anyway. Sometimes they glide in tandem, the poem echoing the title. Sometimes there’s more of a staccato rhythm going on where the title runs counterpoint to the poem.

When titling a poem, I usually ignore the blog wisdom that calls for more of a descriptive title and less of a poetic title. This is poetry, after all. It gets to be poetic. That’s what my license is for, right?

Dead Poets Live

I want to put in a plug for this thoughtful site. Dead Poet Lives’ editor, David S., takes a deep dive into art and poetry with his prompts. They may not come out as often as the two listed above, but they are worth waiting for.

Dave researches the poet in question. My two pieces were based on prompts, one from Wendell Barry’s Window Poems and the other, a poetic parable ala Kahlil Gibran. So in his prompts, there are examples of the poetry as well as what I call “liner notes,” and Dave’s original photographs or paintings illustrating the poems. It’s what I call a total immersion into the spirit of the poet and the particular angle generated from their work.

I read these prompt posts all the way through and even click on the listed links for more. Both the pieces I created from those prompts are quite different from anything I have ever done — a fact I credit to the way Dave’s love of poetry shines through his prompts.

No Crime in Rhymin’

Joe Váradi’s, poetry pub, No Crime in Rhymin’ is an unabashed homage to rhyming verse. The sillier or more irreverent the better. I must say, poems I have posted on this site have done amazingly well in terms of reads and I have created some of my own prompts therein from other posts. In the world of clowning, of which I am a part, we call that finding the game. I must be hard-wired for prompts, what can I say?

MuddyUm

Ahhh. MuddyUm. Thanks to editor Susan Brearley there’s room for all sorts of humor and satire, including our brand of faux news — a far more elegant and sophisticated play on the concept of fake news. We even have our own stable of news agencies on MuddyUm.

This is a site where games and prompts and challenges and tag-your-it’s abound. Mucho spontaneous and playful. This is a site where two of us can riff off of each other and write about a top writer “crown” for wetting our knickers. (You have to be there, which you can with a few clicks…)

The only poem of mine to be curated of late was my iambic imitation, To Tree or Not To Tree, a Christmas decorating rant on MuddyUm. It helped earn me a top writer status in poetry. The idea came to me while driving, so go figure. The car, the shower, and the potty are three of my most creative spots but don’t tell anyone.

If, like me, you’re jonesing for your daily poetic fix, check out these pubs. Lots of good reading and great prompts to get you going and flowing. Looking forward to encountering you somewhere on these pages!

For a more complete list of Medium publications that offer prompts and challenges, enjoy this article by Laura Manipura:

Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times.