Prompt- Open a book, and let your eyes pick the first line.
When I was a Sophomore in college, I had an amazing opportunity to take a Creative Writing Poetry Class. My Professor was a well known published poet,and was very helpful at helping me form my craft. In the class I wrote so many poems that I simply lost count. But, I still have every single one and love each of them.
At the beginning of every class, we would start with a little bit of time to just write. But we would spark our creativity through randomness. Our Professor would pick a student to close their eyes, open their book to a random page, and stop their finger somewhere on the paper. The student would then open their eyes, and share the word or phrase they stopped on. And let me tell you, being in a room full of poetry wizards made every single one worth it. Because no poem was the same.
Some of my favorite poems I wrote came from this practice. Examples of prompts included:
“I never told anybody”
“Some call it eating weather”
“In this Decayed Hole”
All of these poems will be posted in the blog and links will be provided in this post as well- so look out for them!!
One of the books we used for the class was the Penguin Anthology of Twentieth- Century American Poetry. The book is full of work from famous writers all throughout the United States, from a multitude of gender, cultural, and sexual identities. All of the phrases above were from poems included in the Anthology.
Anthology: https://www.esowonbookstore.com/book/9780143121480
More Black owned bookstores:
https://lithub.com/you-can-order-today-from-these-black-owned-independent-bookstores/
In the links tab, I will continuously post links to poems to do this with for my readers without access to books. I will also be sharing links to places to buy the books I write about throughout this blog! I will primarily be sharing links to sustainable, BIPOC or LGBTQ+ owned businesses.
Send me what you come up with!!
XX- T
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