Working in the spirit of Krysten Hill’s “Nothing,” write a poem built around a single word. This can be a word you love or are in awe of, one that challenges or eludes you, one you fear or find com…

This week in a writer group chat, I mentioned Haruki Murakami’s famous–if strangely quiet–origin as a novelist. Murakami claims he saw a baseball player hit a double at a game and something inside …

Road Trip as Liminal Space Content: Write a poem that takes a road trip or that takes on the road trip: the peculiar intimacy of the inside of the car, the intenseness of the company in such close …

Plethora Use the word plethora–borrowed from Late Latin plēthōra, plētūra “fullness, overabundance of a humor,” borrowed from Greek plēthṓra “f…

Create a sensory nest out of any sense other than touch and find somewhere tangible to place it. For instance, weave a nest out of the dulcet sounds of your grandmother’s laugh and place it on your…

Dream Obituary Prompt This prompt came from a dream where my sibling and I discovered a Wikipedia article about our dad. In a dream, you discover a Wikipedia article/a text about someone who has pa…

“I can’t regret my actual life,” Anne Haven McDonnell writes in “The Baby Deer” (second poem on page), her beautiful and tender poem of the more-than-human, of mothering and not-mothering, intimacy…

Open Tab Cascade Prompt Write a poem collaging phrases found within the open tabs of your internet browser,Substack, email app, texts, or any other open windows on your computer or smartphone. For …

Write a catalog or list poem that meditates on a color and an emotion experienced throughout the day—blue and joy, yellow and grief, red and satisfaction, pink and flirtatiousness—without using the…

Something a lot of people don’t know is that a lot of groundbreaking research on gender and sexuality was happening in Weimar Germany. Another thing people forget is that the city of Cordoba …

Collapsing the Phenomenal: An Incredibly Rad and Deceptively Simple Prompt for Poets  1.     Go outside.  a.     If you’re unable to go outsid…

Ask Green Anything   I’m currently working on a manuscript where I interview different parts of my body and let them speak. This got me thinking that more of our world deserves to be hear…

Write about a moment of misconnection—mis-seeing, mishearing, or misremembering. You may write about a small moment (walking around your neighborhood, you think a wrapper is a flower), a big event …

May Swenson’s “Question” is one of those poems perpetually knocking around in my mind. Her questions focus on  the self unhoused from the body. While you are still embodied, what questions do you h…

Find an object with some words on it. Preferably a kitschy one. If you don’t have one to hand, consider popping into your nearest Goodwill or antique store or gift shop that sells reprehensib…

My favorite line from Wes Anderson’s film Asteroid City is “Everything is connected but nothing is working.” Spend some time considering this phrase and use it to begin a poem where robust connecti…

poetry prompt: being neutralYou are going to paint a wall. Not a large wall: call it six feet wide by eight feet high. It is in an area not much troubled by interior traffic. Not a heavily used sta…

What I call generative reading is a way of reading that looks beyond what the poem is “about” to find entry points into your own work. It is not about an attempt to imitate, but rather, to notice—a…

Imagine that the events of a given day in your life have, many years in the future, become a mythological story. Write a poem in the voice of a speaker who is telling the story. Consider who the sp…

‘Every ride a ritual. Every ritual a ride.’ – Drop City by T.C. Boyle Whether a road trip, bad trip, journey through a life experience, or the rituals in your life from t…

Write about a person using only descriptive language and imagery about their voice. Editor’s note: for extra points, write a sonnet. Bridget Gordon (she/her, fae/faer) is a queer trans woman …

Read the below poem by Judith Barrington, Why Young Girls Like to Ride Bareback, out loud several times to find the rhythm of the poem, noting how the title gives you a specific entry point and phy…

Number Systems Write about a topic of your choosing, but give yourself one (or all) of the following numericalconstraints: ● each line must be the same number of words or syllables● generate a rand…

Write a poem about a memory as if you were teaching others to recreate it as something physical: a recipe, a pattern, an instruction manual, etc. Use the terminology of the specific craft or activi…