NAPOWRIMO 2020 – Prompt 5

By on Apr 4, 2020 in Poetry

LEGO minifig running from dinosaur

April is National Poetry Writing Month, and many poets like to challenge themselves to write a poem a day. With that in mind, Wild Violet will be sharing poetry prompts each day: one geared towards adults and one for kids. 

If you write a poem based on this prompt, feel free to share a link to your poem, or the poem itself, in the comments. Poems appearing in the comments are not considered published in Wild Violet, and you retain all rights to your work.

 

Get Small

For Adults:

The more condensed a poem, the more powerful. Today, challenge yourself to whittle down to the essential words. Try writing a poem in five lines or less, and strive to make every word count. For some examples, read “On Spies” by Ben Jonson or “You Fit Into Me” by Margaret Atwood.

 

For Children:

Poems can be as long as a chapter in a book or as short as a few lines. Today, try writing a short poem, using the following steps.

  • Look around you for a small object that you can describe: such as a toy, a grape or even a clump of dust.
  • Write down some words that come to mind when you look at that object. They might be a physical description of it (color, shape, texture), how it makes you feel, or what you imagine it could be doing or thinking.
  • Circle the words you like the most and turn those into a poem.

LEGO Hero

Hands up, running
from a dinosaur disaster.
But one foot
stuck on bumpy grass.
Waiting for play time.

About

Alyce Wilson is the editor of Wild Violet and in her copious spare time writes humor, non-fiction, fiction and poetry and infrequently keeps an online journal. Her first chapbook, Picturebook of the Martyrs; her e-book/pamphlet, Stay Out of the Bin! An Editor's Tips on Getting Published in Lit Mags ; her book of essays and columns, The Art of Life; her humorous nonfiction ebook, Dedicated Idiocy: How Monty Python Fandom Changed My Life, and her newest poetry collection, Owning the Ghosts, can all be ordered from her Web site, AlyceWilson.com. In late 2019, she published a volume of poetry by her third great-grandfather, Reading's Physician Poet: Poems by Dr. James Meredith Mathews, which also contains genealogical information about the Mathews family. She lives with her husband and son in the Philadelphia area and takes far too many photos of her handsome, creative son, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda.