read write prompt #27: gulls like white handkerchiefs

Gulls like white handkerchiefs. How I wish I’d written that line. It is a gorgeous simile. Alas. It is not mine. It is a line from Isabel Allende’s new memoir, The Sum of Our Days.
This week, your prompt is fairly simple. Make comparisons. Notice the world around you. Turn your observations into similes (and [...]

read write prompt #26: are you my mother?

It’s the time of year when the earth blooms with warmth and color, baby robins crack through eggshells to naively take on the world, and Hollywood moms proudly strut about to reveal their winter-night-born love-bumps. And the American greeting card industry is counting on us all to send our mothers a card.
I resisted making this [...]

read write prompt #25: see things differently part 2 (sci-fi poetry)

I’m always impressed by the potential of Science Fiction to look at everyday life from an entirely different point of view. Issues and topics considered within an alien setting can help the reader to see things from a fresh perspective. Most people think of science fiction in the form of novels or films but science [...]

read write prompt #24: jargon

We live in a world of increasing specialization. Just about every little things has an entire field of knowledge dedicated to it, and each of those little fields has its own vocabulary.
Science uses a whole lot of Latin, psychology uses the word affect in a very strange way, and unless you happen to be a [...]

read write prompt #23: oil and vinegar

What happens when you pour balsamic vinegar over extra-virgin olive oil? The oil rests on top of the vinegar in the cruet, but if you shake the contents, you create a delicious salad dressing.
Prompt
For your poem this week, try combining two elements that don’t seem to go together at first glance. Here’s the process:
• Think [...]

read write prompt: #22 speak freely

This week we welcome one of our participants at Read Write Poem who will be joining our prompt team.

At fourteen Ren Powell read Helen Hayes’ admission of having misinterpreted: “And the Word was God”. Feeling a kinship with Hayes — an awe of the power of words — Ren swapped her teen-angst poems for playwrighting. [...]

read write prompt: #21 family matters (aunts)

This week’s prompt is aunt, simply because today is my favorite aunt’s birthday. I call her Aunt B (for Barbara), but she is also known as Babs, Barbie, Sissy, Mom, Mother, Grams, Grandma, Grandmother and Mrs. Linn.
Perhaps you have a favorite aunt (or uncle or cousin). But then, so many families are crazy (fun or [...]

read write prompt: #20 overheard at the ________ (insert location here); a writing prompt in two parts

I.
“I’ve done nothing but cry all day. All day I’ve cried.” “It looks pretty gloomy for the first day of Spring.” “Then he took my cat outside.” “It’s perfect for a bachelor.” Random words. Anonymous opinions. Sad truths. Humorous observations. Snippets of other people’s conversation can serve as great inspiration for your writing. Actually, writing [...]

read write prompt #19: go green!

As Juliet mentioned on Monday, this Friday — March 21 — is World Poetry Day.

So I thought we could all take some time to go green this week. Laud the beauty of nature, decry the ruin of the earth, or simply ponder all the things we throw away and ask yourself this fundamental question: [...]

read write prompt: #18 see things differently 1: be a tree

One of the things I love about this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere is how the trees are returning to their broader life. I often wonder what it would be like to be a tree, how different life would be — rooted in one place and naked in the winter (or to [...]


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