Weekly Prompt: Kenji’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Prompt Contest Winner!)

Congratulations to Kenji, the winner of our 2010 National Poetry Month Prompt Contest!

Here’s a slightly paraphrased version of his winning prompt.

Writes Kenji: “This one is not mine originally, but it’s one of the best ones I’ve ever tried. It comes by way of poet Suheir Hammad.”

Prompt:

Close your eyes and think about a time in your life that was extremely difficult.  Imagine the scene in as much detail as possible. Now, holding that moment of difficulty in your mind, search the scene and find one aspect of the situation or your environment that was beautiful. It could be environment and sensory – a sound, color, texture, lighting – or it could be an insight, perspective or emotion that existed at the same time as the difficulty.

Write about that beautiful aspect of this scene of difficulty for 15 minutes.

* * *

We liked the creative possibilities of the paradoxical tension that this prompt asks the writer to explore: not beauty in spite of difficulty, nor a romanticized celebration of difficulty, but the strangeness by which a moment of difficulty can take on aspects of the beautiful.  Exploring this sort of tension in a poem may have the potential to open up an image or brief narrative moment to strange, surprising, and ever more complex associations.

Kenji will be receiving a signed copy of Monica Youn’s Ignatz.  Congratulations to him, and many thanks to all who participated!

Weekly Prompt: Steph’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Contest 1st Runner-Up)

This week prompt is from Steph, the reader whose prompt we’ve chosen as the 1st runner-up in our National Poetry Month Contest:

Prompt: Find a childhood toy and write about the first memory that comes to mind. Also consider the toy’s colors, textures, heft, etc.

We thought this was an interesting take on the exercise of writing about an object as a memorial trigger (I’ve done this before with vegetables and with household items like hangers and lightbulbs, but never with toys, which have a peculiar relationship to memory as both mute witness to and the subject/object of memory).  There are so many ways that you could spin it: a textural list poem, a persona poem, an ode, a poem in the form of an advertisement, an epistolary poem, etc.

Many congratulations to Steph!  Please check back next Friday when we reveal our first place winner and the recipient of a signed copy of Ignatz.

Weekly Prompt: YW’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Contest 2nd Runner-Up)

This week’s prompt comes from LR reader “YW,” whose submission to our National Poetry Month Contest we’ve chosen as our second runner-up.

Prompt: Rewrite a fairy tale in verse from a different character’s perspective (e.g. the witch in Hansel and Gretel).

We were intrigued by this persona poem exercise, and thought that it might be interesting to consider in conversation with Louise Glück’s haunting take on Hansel and Gretel, “Gretel in Darkness.”  Here’s an excerpt of the poem to get you thinking (the rest can be found on the Poetry Foundation’s web site):

“Gretel in Darkness

by Louise Glück

This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas. . . .
Now, far from women’s arms
and memory of women, in our father’s hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.”

Congratulations to YW, and happy Friday to all!  Look out for the prompt from our first runner-up next week.

Weekly Prompt: Joy’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Contest 3rd Runner-Up)

A big thank you to all of you who submitted prompts to our National Poetry Month contest!  We’ve chosen three runners-up and one winner, and will be announcing them week by week as we post the ideas that they submitted.

This week, we’re featuring, as our third runner-up, a prompt that comes from an idea submitted by LR reader Joy.

Prompt: Write a poem having to do with place characterized in some way by a border or boundary.

Congratulations to Joy, and thanks again to all of you who submitted entries.

Check back again next Friday to see the prompt from our second runner-up!

Announcing Our 2010 National Poetry Month Prompt Contest

Special Prize: A Signed Copy of Monica Youn's IGNATZ.

National Poetry Month is coming up in April, and in order to mark it, the LR blog is going to be hosting our first ever Prompt Contest, made possible by the generous sponsorship of Four Way Books.  Do you think our Weekly Prompts could use some spicing up?  Do you have a favorite writing exercise that you’d like to share?  Here’s your chance to have your ideas featured in our weekly content, or even — if you turn out to be the one lucky person whose prompt we like best — to win a signed copy of Monica Youn’s new collection Ignatz!

Here’s how it will work:

1) Leave a comment on this post that includes the text of your prompt.  Entries must be posted by 11:59PM EST on Thursday, April 1st April 8th. Comments on this post will close after that time. Please leave some form of basic contact information in your comment (even if it’s just a link to the contact page on your web site), so that we can get in touch with you if you win.

2) During the first full week of April, we’ll be choosing the four prompts that we like best.  The winner and all three runners up will have their entries featured as Weekly Prompts on the LR Blog during the four Fridays from April 9th – 30th.  In addition, the winner will also receive a special prize that has been graciously offered  by Four Way Books: a signed copy of Monica Youn’s Ignatz. We will announce the runners up and winner week by week starting with the third runner-up and culminating with the winner, so keep on checking back in April to see if your entry has been featured.

3) A few ground rules: You may only enter once. Please submit only poetry prompts.  Keep all prompts appropriate: anything of a bigoted, demeaning, or nasty nature will not be considered; we’d also appreciate it if you could please try to keep your prompts somewhat PG in nature, as when choosing prompts we always try to look for flexible exercises which can be adapted for classroom use with either adults or kids.

That’s it!  Go forth and prompt-ify; we look forward to reading your entries!  And while you’re at it, please do check out Ignatz on Four Way’s site.  Many thanks to Editor Martha Rhodes, to Monica Youn, and to Four Way for their generosity.  Be on the lookout for our review of the collection next month.