Young Writers Society

Jot down the important events from a particular year, for example, the summer of 2002. Freewrite about it, see where it takes you.

Find a poem you like, then place your notepad or piece of paper next to the poem and begin line by line going through what the poet has done. Where the poet has a metaphor, make one up yourself. Where the poet has rhyme, try to rhyme yourself. Follow the pattern of enjambment and line breaks the poet has done from line to line and stanza to stanza. Try not to be too derivative though! Play around with it, read it backwards, and see where it will take you. Include the link to the original poem with your own, or have it in a spoiler.

The dark is only a blanket
for the moon to put on her bed.

The dark is a private cinema
for the movie dreams in your head.

The dark is a little black dress
to show off the sequin stars.

The dark is the wooden hole
behind the strings of happy guitars.

The dark is a jeweler’s velvet cloth
where children sleep like pearls.

The dark is a spool of film
to photograph boys and girls,

so smile in your sleep in the dark.
Don’t be scared.

Dig through your old notebooks, your old diary entries, your pocket books from last year’s NaPo, or maybe even try digging through your portfolios here on YWS - pick any random lines gathered from a few of these sources and find a way to re-envision them or make a collage of them!

Choose an odd job as a subject for your poem, for example: the picture above is a cliff dancer. There are also beer tasters, fortune cookie writers, crash-test dummies, YWS war gladiators. After choosing your odd job, do a Google search. Find some appropriate articles and jot down words that are special to this job. Choose words that sound and look pleasing to you. Then, using first person voice write your draft and employ some of these specialized diction.

Choose a category-- fruits, vegetables, fish, bones in the human body, etc. You’ll want to choose something broad that has a lot of variety. Then create a bank of words about that category that intrigue you, words with great sounds, rhyming or alliterative words, verbs, adjectives, etc. Make up some words of your own. Try to make words sound as delicious as possible. Then begin with "Because I never learned the names of _______" Then create a poem from your word hoard, make it rhythmic, make it flow and make it yours. The beauty of Jellema's poem above, is that a lot of the words are made-up. Feel free to use this technique as well. Be creative with it!

Write a portrait poem - a poem that shows a particular scene or place, a dreamscape, or a moment where you’ve learned or experienced something new, such as your first time learning how to surf. Your first attempt trying to cook an exotic recipe. The first trip you took to a foreign country. You may even write about an experience from an alternative point of view, such as in this poem, Gerstler writes about survival in the point of view of a caterpillar.

Now that you have a draft going. Go through each word, line by line. Erase all the adjectives and all the adverbs that you see. Erase as many prepositional words as possible. Did you lose a lot of your poem? If so, refer back to prompts 5 and 4 - allow your nouns and verbs to do all the work and try again!

If you’re still struggling. That’s okay. Poetry is like a sculpture and the process of erasing, eliminating, cutting and polishing is what poetry is all about. This prompt is extreme but the exercise is a good one. Keep chipping and chiseling away at that poem until you get something you like without any adjectives or adverbs used! **I will allow ONE adjective or adverb, but that’s all. Absolutely no haikus. Needs to have at least 10 lines. (No one-word lines) **

Because when you have a poem that can evoke an experience without any use of fluff - you have mastered diction!

Writing a Sonnenizio (spin-off of a sonnet)

Begin with a line borrowed from someone else’s sonnet.

Select a single word from that line and repeat it in each subsequent line. Consider part of speech and different forms of the word. In the example poem, Addonizio is repeating the word "part" but she also uses partway, party, and partisan. She uses her word as noun, verb and participle.

Have a total of 14 lines.

Make the last two lines rhyme.