Profession: Poet is a quarterly blog feature exploring craft and identity in poetry by Hanoch Guy, who writes poems in both English and Hebrew.
Poetry does not have to make sense and other unusual prompts
When you feel that your poetry needs a shakeup, open your mind to clear the slate and consider the following:
Pick up your last poem and choose a middle line, and enlarge it in a new document.
Then pick another line from another poem.
Combine the two lines and leave a triple space.
Sit with the lines for a while and open a cookbook.
Copy part of the first recipe.
Make it a habit to listen to a poem in a foreign language every once in a while. Write down your reactions.
Go to totally unfamiliar places and write.
Next time you are on public transit, write what people are saying.
Drive to another place and write another poem.
I was struck by Daniel Ari’s observations on poetry, especially the ones about outstanding strong words. I like his point that there are firework words and that some poems have a few fireworks words and some too many. You can read more about what makes a poem stand out among hundreds or thousands of poems. He blogs at fightswithpoems.blogspot.com.
Can you come up with a list of juicy words, wild words?
Also think of smelly, weird, strange, upside-down, and funny words.
Add hilarious words to each line.
Slice open a watermelon, honeydew, or melon. Smell and taste them. Look intensely at one of them until it talks to you; maybe it will tell you its story or poem.
Focus on an object in your house: a vase, a crystal, or a doll.
Focus on your cat when he or she stays still and have a dialogue.
Write a six-line poem in reverse: write the last word of the first line as the first. Pick every third word of each line, put them all in a list.
Write a trapped poem inside a rectangle.
Arrange a dizzy poem in a circle.
Which prompt was the oddest for you to do? Which prompt did you most enjoy?
Hanoch Guy Ph.D, Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch has taught Jewish Hebrew literature at Temple University and poetry and mentoring at the Muse House Center. He won awards in the Mad Poets Society, Phila Poets, Poetry Super Highway and first prize in the Better than Starbucks haiku contest. His book, Terra Treblinka, is a finalist in the North Book Contest. Hanoch published poems in England, Wales, Israel, the U.S., and Greece. He is the author of nine poetry collections in English and one Hebrew book.