Poetry Prompts for Lovers

Poetry is one of the most magical forms of self-expression. You can express thoughts, ideas, and feelings in a poem that are otherwise difficult, or even impossible, to say in any other form of communication.

And poetry has long been the language of lovers. Millions of writers have used poetry to declare their affections, obsessions, and heartbreaks.

Today’s poetry prompts celebrate lovers and the poems they write. Read more

Poetry Prompts for Ranting and Raving

It’s easy to think of poetry as soft, flowery, and convoluted. It’s the stuff of Shakespeare, greeting cards, and children’s books. It’s precious, sweet, and erudite.

But some of the most exciting modern poetry defies all those stereotypes, and you need look no further than the slam poetry and spoken word communities to see how poetry can be infused with rage, passion, and humor.

These poets have mastered the art of ranting and raving via performance poetry. It’s no wonder that during live recordings of some of their most impassioned poems, the crowd can be heard hooting and hollering.

Today’s poetry prompts encourage you to write a poem ranting and raving about something that really chaps your hide.

Poetry Prompts

You can use these poetry prompts to write any kind of poem you want. But for some reason, poems that rant and rave work exceptionally well in performance. These pieces have luster on the page, but they explode when the poet reads them aloud, so I recommend working on a poem that is meant to be performed. There is a list of links to some excellent recordings of rant poems at the end of this post.

How to use these poetry prompts:

Choose one of the lists below and write a poem using all of the words in the list. You can also write a poem mixing and matching words from these lists or using all of the words from all of the lists.

Social Consciousness	Personal Affronts	Road Rage & Pet Peeves
humanity hunger equality power greed redemption freedom	insult betrayal violated manners bully robbed forgotten	bad words refills impatience thoughtless slow down spam stop

Once you’ve finished your poem, feel free to come back here and share it with us.

Explore More

Need some ideas to help you get started with these poetry prompts? Below are links to a few examples of rant poems that are beautifully executed — well written and brilliantly performed. Once you follow the link, you’ll need to click the pod icon to listen to the performances.

WARNING: some of these poems may contain offensive language. But they show the breadth of subject matter that a rant poem can tackle. Some are full of anger, others are imbibed with grace, and a couple are sprinkled with humor. Enjoy!

• How to Write a Political Poem – Taylor Mali
• Lit; or To The Scientist I Am Not Speaking To Anymore - Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
• A Modest Proposal - Jack McCarthy
• Anti-War Rant - Jamie Kilstein
• Advice to Rihanna - Mahogany Browne

All these poems and many more can be found on IndieFeed Performance Poetry, which is one of my favorite podcasts. I highly recommend checking it out (you can also subscribe via iTunes).

Poetry Prompts for Winter

Poetry prompts and writing exercises are great ways to get a little creative writing done when inspiration is absent. They’re also perfect for challenging yourself as a writer to incorporate new ideas and themes into your work.

You can use prompts and exercises on days when you’re not feeling especially inspired or as a way to work on something a little different from your usual writing fare. Write a long poem, a short poem, a haiku, or a pantoum.

As long as you get the creative writing flowing and have fun with it, you’re doing it right!

These poetry prompts can be used for other types of writing too. Try using them in a short story, a blog post, or a bit of creative prose.

Poetry Prompts

Write a poem that contains all of the words in each list, including the title word. That’s it! Pretty simple, right?

Winter’s

burnt
spacious
metropolis
pacing
fiery
cannon

Snowy

green
loudly
tub
swims
sultry
sharp

Season

hilarious
elegantly
hips
fern
listless
twisting

Create Poetry Prompts

You can also create your own poetry prompts by flipping through the dictionary and selecting words at random. For the poetry prompts here on Writing Forward, I usually try to find words that have nothing to do with each other, and I try to include a range of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs to make the poetry writing just a little more challenging.

If you try these poetry prompts, feel free to share your poems in the comments. And keep on writing!

Poetry Prompts for the End of the Year

The end of yet another year is just around the corner. It’s a busy season packed with holiday shopping, gatherings with friends and family, and preparationg for the new year ahead.

When things get busy, it’s important for writers to keep their heads in the clouds. Don’t forget about your dreams! Don’t let your poetry fall by the wayside lest you forget to return!

Maybe you don’t have time to sit and write the way you usually do. Maybe your head is spinning with all the things you have to get done. That’s fine. Just set a few minutes aside and let these poetry prompts walk you through a brief writing session.

We’ll even keep the focus on things that are going on right now – things like food, holidays, gifts, goals, and the new year. Read more

Scary Poetry Prompts

Poetry prompts are great for those times when you have the creative itch but just can’t seem to reach around to scratch it. Hey, we can’t be inspired every single day.

Writing exercises like poetry prompts challenge us while stirring our creativity.

And these ones are just in time for Halloween.

All Hallow’s Eve

Halloween comes from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest season and the time of year when people slaughtered livestock for the coming cold months.

Because it marked a new cycle, this festival was viewed as a kind of new year celebration. It was also the time of year when the fog between our world and the world of the deceased evaporated, which meant the dead could move about in our world and wreak havoc. Read more

Poetry Prompts for Fall

It seems like summer always passes too quickly and winter lasts too long. Maybe that’s why fall is my favorite season. It seems to hang around just long enough. It’s not too hot, not too cold. A mild, colorful, and comfortable season.

Every fall, my creativity goes into overdrive, and I doubt this year will be any different. I’m not sure what it is about all the rusty and golden hues that fills me with inspiration, but I’m always grateful when the leaves start to turn because I know that my imagination is about get fired up. Read more

Poetry Prompts for Language Lovers

Poets have a unique relationship with language. For a poet, language is more than a tool for communication; it’s a set of paints and paintbrushes that can be used to create scenes and images that resonate with readers.

A poet must then foster a loving relationship with language, learning its secrets, understanding its idiosyncrasies, and mastering its structure, then bending it to the poet’s own will. Read more

All-Natural Poetry Prompts

Throughout the centuries, poets have composed meditations on seasons, landscapes, and constellations. Vegetation and animals have been the subjects of countless poems, and even when poetry is not centered around nature, it often makes references to it.

In poetry, nature may function as the backdrop — the setting in which the action takes place. Nature, and various elements of nature, may also hold center stage. Why are so many poets compelled to write about nature? Read more

Seasonal Poetry Prompts for Spring and Summer

Poets often hail the seasons by writing odes to them, and spring and summer are no exceptions.

Rebirth is a common theme in poetry, so the spring season, with its fresh skies and new shoots, is a great inspiration for composition.

Summer is packed with sights, smells, and sounds: splashing water and fresh lemonade; hot dogs from the fair and bike rides on the beach.

All of these things find their way into poetry.

Poetry Prompts for Spring

As always, these poetry prompts are simple and straightforward. Choose one of the three lists and write a poem using every word in that list. Or, to really challenge yourself, try using all the words from all the lists in your poem. You can even mix and match the words on these lists however you want.

Flower Buds	Blue-Gray Skies	Mud and Muck
pepper cream titanic lure smash	telling rinse foul harbor horses	clean squeak scoop woolly bully

Poetry Prompts for Summer

Below, you will find five lists of words. Each list pertains to one of the five senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Choose one word from each list. You can mix up the words to write a free-verse poem or choose one word from each list to kick-start each verse in a five-verse poem. If you want to write a poem that appeals entirely to one sense, simply choose the list that corresponds (for example, the SMELL list) and use all the words on that list for your poem. Or, to really challenge yourself, try writing a single poem using all the words from all the lists. That ought to really tickle the senses!

Sight	Sound	Smell	Taste	Touch
Beach ballParade Surfer Tourist Swimsuits Sunglasses (shades) Buckets & Spades Dripping Ice cream Boardwalk Horseshoe crabs Jelly fish Lifeguard boats Beach bags Lightning bugs (fireflies), June bugs Hanging basket Clear blue skies Cotton white clouds	SplashingOutdoor concerts (or beach concerts) Waves crashing Thunder (don’t forget about those summer storms!) Music blaring from convertibles Seagull calls Lawn mowers Fans (A/C) Children playing Ice cream truck/van Buzzing bees, bumble bees buzzing, honey bees	BarbecueChlorine (swimming pool) Suntan lotion (or sunblock) Coconut Ripe peaches Wildflowers Freshly cut grass (wet summers like this one), parched grass (dry summers) Fresh summer rain	Ice creamFresh summer fruits: watermelon, plums, grapes Flavored shaved ice, popsicles Iced tea and lemonade Cotton candy, popcorn Fish & Chips Salt water taffy Vine-ripe tomatoes Sea (salt) water Strawberries and cream Blackberry pie	(Gritty) sandWater (Feet in) flip-flops Burn-your-feet-hot concrete/pavement Warm/hot breezes Freshly watered (or cut) grass Water balloons in the face (via water balloon fights!) Sun on your face

Share Your Poetry Prompts (or Your Poems)

If you write a poem using these prompts, feel free to post it in the comments. Or, post it on your blog and then come back here and drop a link.

Keep writing (and reading) poetry!

If you have any poetry prompts or writing exercises to share, feel free to post them in the comments or send them in as a guest post. And if you have any prompts to add to these lists, share them and I’ll add them in a future update.

Family-Inspired Poetry Prompts

Writers are always looking for new ideas. Sometimes, we look so far and wide for inspiration that we are oblivious to what is right in front of us.

They say “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.” In life, we are presented with many choices, but family is not one of them. It’s pretty much luck of the draw.

The people to whom we are related are beyond our control, which is why they provide excellent inspiration for writing. Read more

Five Poetry Prompts, a Writing Exercise

This year, I’d like to get back to writing poetry regularly. I used to write poetry every single day, and as a result I have hundreds of poems in notebooks and in the writing files on my computer.

For the past few years, I’ve only written a few poems here and there, because the focus of my writing has shifted dramatically.

Poetry prompts are a great way to trigger creativity and sometimes they inspire a truly wonderful piece of poetry.

For today’s exercise, I chose a few poems I’ve written over the years and selected five words from each poem. The objective is to write your own poem using all of the words from any one of the groups below.

Of course, one poem with all of the words would be fantastic! Any combination will do, really, so pluck the words at will. I think it would be fun to compare the ones I wrote to any of the ones you write from this exercise. Will they be about the same topic or have a similar sensibility? Read more