In his interview with Dr. Adesina, Sean Hill discusses an instance in which the intersection of the history of a place and the ecology of that place proved fertile ground, and helped bring to fruition a poem that had been incubating for a while. This prompt invites you to explore the same intersection as an instrument for your own revision process.

Take a poem that is in draft form, or that you’ve been struggling with for a while. Pull out 2-3 places that are mentioned in the poem or that are relevant somehow to the poem. Research both the history and ecology of those places–when was it founded? what are the demographics? what plants are native to it? what animals? Make a list of words, phrases and facts that intrigue you. Return to the draft and experiment with at least two ways that the information you gathered might be incorporated into the poem.

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Look around: language is everywhere, but doing different things, manifesting in different ways. In the spirit of Krista Franklin’s work, this prompt invites you to construct a poem by collaging language from at least three disparate sources. For example, how might you pull the language of an ad, an instruction manual, and a ballot into conversation? The constitution, an overheard conversation, and a grocery bill? What delicious frictions or unanticipated connections might you (and only you) create?

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This prompt is about the body as a site of historical continuum. Think of your people’s history, at least, 200 years back. Where were they? What were they doing? Zero in on ancestor and write a poem in which this ancestor is dancing. Write about the fullness of their body in this dance, the arms, the neck, the quivering or whistling lips, the pant, the rise and fall of the chest. What sound do you hear? What rhythm was this ancestor dancing to? What specific music? 

Now, write a poem in which you are dancing. Write about the fullness of your body in this dance, the arms, the neck, your quivering or whistling lips, the pant, the rise and fall of your chest, the delicious sweat of neck, arms, and thighs in a dance. What sound do you hear? What specific music are you dancing to? 

Place both poems side by side on the page to form a contrapuntal. What re-visioning does placing the poems side by side call for? Work the lines till you can read you can read them downwards and  sideways at the same time and both directions lead you into a haunting meaning, work the poems, till lines from the poem about your body start to blend into the poem about the ancestor’s body, till the arms and legs start to touch, till your dance becomes indistinguishable from dance of your ancestor. 

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In his interview, Tawanda Mulalu talks about how the transitions and cycle of seasons serve as an archive of emotions in his life and consequently as a system of arranging and sequencing the poems in his book. Moreover, music and musicality play a major role he how dreamt his book into being as someone who plays some musical instruments and listens to a wide range of music. This writing prompt seeks to braid these two impulses together: If four musical instruments could capture your emotions and experiences during each of the four seasons in the year what four musical instruments would these be and for which seasons? Imagine yourself as these instruments, what sounds, what feelings, what experiences, what silences would you be an archive of? Write a poem that imagines you as these musical instruments describing the spiritual and emotional impact of the specific seasons as the seasons cycle and transition.

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As the title of her latest book, suddenly we, demonstrates, and as Dr. Ford explores in her essay examining its use of the communal voice, Evie Shockley’s work is invested in plural vocality that holds both the individual and community in a blended chorus. This prompt invites you to write a poem that inhabits the tensions and possibilities of the “We.” From what choirs do you sing? What solos, harmonies, or cacophonies emerge?

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In her interview for The Fight & The Fiddle, Shara McCallum talks about her entry point into historical research as not the drive to “be part of the project of history” and the question “What is my unfinished business?” This prompt invites you to visit a physical or virtual archive, explore and sit with the material, engage your curiosity– Where might you enter? What absences are you alert to? What is centered, and what hides or is hidden in the margins? What alternative stories might the facts and artifacts before you tell? Then, write toward your own “unfinished business” with “the project of history.”

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In her interview for The Fight & The Fiddle, Mahogany L. Browne talks about the challenge she had in breaking down big concepts for young readers, asking “How do I say racism in twelve-year-old?” In trying to speak to younger audiences, she discovered, “We are so shrouded in the beauty of language that we’re actually running away from the heat of the truth.” Using this challenge as a prompt, write a poem that wrestles with describing or explaining a complicated and abstract idea to a twelve-year-old. Consider it an opportunity, as Browne did, to “peel back those layers to figure out what we’re actually trying to say.”

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Both attentive to and unrestrained by the movements of meter, Shane McCrae’s work invites readers to engage in metrical poetry in new and interesting ways. As Jerriod Avant notes in his essay about the centrality of meter in McCrae’s work, what’s magical about McCrae’s use of these time-honored rhythms is simultaneously his commitment to using them and making them his own. This prompt is an invitation to do the same: refresh your memory (or do some research) about a particular meter—What is an iamb? A trochee? What are their typical uses?—and write a poem that both utilizes that metrical beat and somehow turns it on its head!

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Inspired by her “Poetry Baby Daddy” Pablo Neruda, Samantha Thornhill writes odes to almost everything– from her apron, “dotted with delicious / splatter and spill,” to the experience of single parenthood, which “is rain beading across your hair, / snow melting on your lips. Avalanche.” The secret to a good ode, Thornhill observes, lies in both the animation of the inanimate, but also in acknowledging the “shadow,” the difficult truths that must hold hands with the form’s celebratory tone.

Write a full-throated ode in which you animate an ordinary object or experience, making sure you explore its shadows as well. Make it sing!

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