Text Prompts
Write a poem about a time when something really bad happened…that later turned out to be a good thing. – a prompt by Harvey Schwartz
Image Prompts
Submitted by Catherine Dickson, a photo of her dog Lumpy.
The Poetry Marathon
Prompts for Hour Twelve
Text Prompts
Write about gathering with others. The specifics are up to you.
Image Prompts
Contributed by Ofuma Agali who adds “This is a sitting room of an Art Centre in Ikot Ekpene, south of Nigeria. This place attracts writers and readers alike.”
Prompt For Hour Eleven
Text Prompt
Write a poem about laughter without ever using the words, laugh, laughter, or giggle.
Image Prompt
Contributed by Deborah Dalton
Prompts For Hour Ten
Text Prompt
“Personify an animal. Switch its trait. Example: a disinterested lion, a polite gorilla, an aggressive giraffe…” – Contributed by John Dutton
Image Prompt
Photo by rajat sarki on Unsplash
Prompts for Hour Nine
Text Prompt
“Look in your cupboards and find a food that brings up a childhood memory, and the memory is your prompt” – contributed by Deborah Dalton
Image Prompt
Photo by Dylan Shaw on Unsplash
Prompts for the Eighth Hour
Text Prompt
Every year we have a new form prompt, and this year, it’s the Gigan, which is an invented form. There’s a detailed blog post about it here, and it includes an example Gigan, which always helps.
Gigans must be 16 lines in length with seven stanzas (each stanza is separated by a line break). It goes couplet (two lines), tercet (three lines), couplet, couplet, couplet, tercet, couplet.
The first line is also the eleventh line, line six is repeated as line 12 as well.
Optionally the closing couplet should put a twist on the poem, but that isn’t a requirement.
Image Prompt
Photo contributed by Ofuma Agali.
Prompts for the Seventh Hour
A Sort of Text Prompt
Look on your phone and find the 10th non selfie picture and use that as your prompt. – Prompt by Deborah Dalton
Image Prompt
Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash
Prompts for the Sixth Hour
Text Prompt
Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of someone who is no longer in your life. It could be a former teacher you admired but you lost touch with, someone you knew from childhood, someone who passed on, etc. The specifics are very much up to you.
Image Prompt
Photo by Melissa Keizer on Unsplash
Prompts for the Fourth Hour
Text Prompt
Write a poem set a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now.
Image Prompt
Photo by Xavier von Erlach on Unsplash