List 5 problems. Now list 5 possible solutions for each problem. Pick the 2 least appealing solutions for your least favorite problem and write a poem debating between those two solutions.

If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

Think of someone/something you disagree with- an ex, a foe, a politics. Write a poem from their point of view. Write so that if they were to read it, they’d feel seen.

Apologies for the lateness of this prompt. My sister came into town! Sisters are great. If you have a sister, write a poem about her. If not, perhaps a brother or a cousin, or the sibling you have in an alternate universe.

Make a list of 20 causes and their effects, things that actually happened in your life. Now make a list of 5 causes and effects in some other system – nature, computers, space, politics, religion, etc. Now, pick an adverb to be used as a relative pronoun (e.g. – why, how, who, whom, which, whoever, when, etc). Write a poem with 5 stanzas whose structure is something like:

{ cause 1 from other system } happened
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 1 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 2 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 3 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 4 in my life }

{ cause 2 from other system } happened
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 5 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 6 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 7 in my life }
this is { relative pronoun } { effect 8 in my life }

and so on. Play with the phrasing, make it your own, but see what this structure will give you.

Write an elegy for a place. It can be a place you loved, or a place you didn’t love. Try to stat small – no elegies for the world or a country.

Start with something banal: a clickbait headline. Visit a site like Buzzfeed and take a headline from one of their sillier articles as your poem title.

Where will you be when the world ends? For inspiration, here are some songs where different songwriters answered (or asked) this question:

“Where Will I Be?” by Emmylou Harris
“1999” by Prince
“The Earth Died Screaming” by Tom Waits
“Sky Is Falling” by Blackalicious
“Famous Last Words” by Tears For Fears

Write an ekphrastic poem, but using something that isn’t art. Maybe an animnated gif? Or an advertisement? Stock photography?

Lose your poem in translation. Take an old poem draft that never went anywhere and pick a favorite line or section from it. Run that line or section through Google Translate – translate it into another langauge. Copy the result and then run it through again, translating it into a third langauge. Do this a few times, then translate back into English. What do you get? Write a new poem using the result.

Below is the above paragraph after having been translated English -> Chinese -> Tamil -> Gaelic -> English:

Report your poem translation Take an old poem with no space, choose favorite lines or your favorite styles. Go through line or section via Google Translate – translate into another language. With results, re-run it as a third language. Translate to English many times. What did you get? Write a new poem as a result.