Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Concept prompts

1. Write a poem using every sense except sight.
2. Write a self-portrait in the third person.
3. Write about close calls, trouble, fights.
4. Write a letter to someone you haven’t met yet.
5. Write a recipe or a how-to.
6. Write a celebration of something ordinary.
7. Write from the perspective of something lost, forgotten, or thrown away.
8. Write a poem about a beginning.
9. Write a plan that’s sure to fail.
10. Write a poem about the deity of an abstract concept.
11. Write a poem explaining adulthood to a child.
12. Write a one-line response to each of the above prompts and combine them into one poem.

Activity prompts

1. Pick a color, take a walk, and write a poem using everything you see that’s that color. 
2. Write random words on a deck of index cards. Shuffle the cards, pick three, and write a poem using those three words. 
3. Buy, borrow, or try on an item of clothing you wouldn’t usually wear. Write a poem about the person who would. 
4. Pick a word and find it in the dictionary. Count 7 words down, and write a poem starting with the 7th word. 
5. Think of something you hate. Write a love letter to it. 
6. Find a random Wikipedia article and create a found poem from the words on the page. 

Starter prompts

1. The woman on the roof
2. Benadryl, aloe vera, and a face mask
3. The difference between chaos and order
4. When you return
5. If light can guide, then light can misguide too
6. The mountains will not mourn
7. Where terror belongs
8. Pride and Vanity, a love story
9. How to make a river cry
10. An honest portrait of the slightly-unhinged
11. Why I stopped killing the boxelder bugs
12. Across the world, a boy shaped like a man
13. Free to a good home
14. She flies because she’s hollow
15. The World Clown Association apologizes