Jeanann Verlee's Prey presents a series of poems about predators and their prey. It's a an exquisitely articulated chronicle of trauma. It's a fantastic book, but it was difficult to come up with a suite of prompts to represent the poems without the fear of inducing trauma on anyone following the prompts, or ignoring the necessity of the subject matter of these poems. I've tried to be as true to these poems as possible without making this too emotionally difficult for people following the prompts. This post picks up from the previous one. 20. If We Were Meat. Humans aren't often on the menu for other animals, apart from the occasional person antagonizing predator into being eaten, or hungry carnivore happens upon human in distress. Many science fiction books, shows, and movies have imagined scenarios in which humans became the favored meat of a deadlier predator. Now it's your turn. What life form would eat us, and how? You can be as literal or metaphorical about this prompt as makes you comfortable.
21. Menace. In horror movies, victims of the predator often get a goading one-liner in before they either escape or are killed. Fortunately, life is rarely like a horror movie (though more and more like a horror show by the year). Imagine a non-imminent-death scenario where you had the opportunity for an epic one-liner but you didn't think of it in time. Instead of giving us the lead up to the line, what do you imagine would have happened differently in your life After you gave the ultimate insult. 22. The Most Dangerous Game. Tell the readers about a time you were brazen, and it ended up working out for you. 23. Reprisal. Give us a complete story in a single tercet. 24. Secret Written From Inside A Lion's Mouth. Ghost line prompts are where you start a poem with lines from someone else's work, and when you are finished, you erase those lines so that only your own work remains. Begin your poem with the following ghost lines: I worried most that the worry would be what finally/did us in. 25. The Sociopath's Wife Knows Endurance. I've read many poems from the voice of the magician's assistant. What other job descriptions lend themselves to the metaphor of being victim? Tell us a story from the perspective of someone in that career. 26. Secret Written From Inside A Vulture's Mouth. Animal facts often make intriguing entry points for poems. Use an animal fact as the basis for a metaphor in a poem or story. Apart from mentioning the animal in the title of the poem, make no reference to it in the text. 27. How Women Begot The Bible. Persona pieces were a common fixture of performance poetry in the early 2000s. People would choose an interesting character from history and tell a story from their perspective. Instead of going precisely that route, write a poem or story from the perspective of an interesting character from history's therapist, or the best friend they told secrets to. 28. Velocity. What is your childhood bully up to now? How about a close friend that you grew distant from as you got older? Don't google them or Facebook stalk them, just imagine who they grow into. Write that version. Then, if it satiates you, you can look up what they're really like, and write a companion piece. 29. Secret Written From Inside A Shark's Mouth. Another animal fact poem. This time find three or four fascinating facts about the same animal. Alternate stanzas between telling us a story and telling us the trivia that inspired you to think of the story.
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Jeanann Verlee's Prey presents a series of poems about predators and their prey. It's a an exquisitely articulated chronicle of trauma. It's a fantastic book, but it was difficult to come up with a suite of prompts to represent the poems without the fear of inducing trauma on anyone following the prompts, or ignoring the necessity of the subject matter of these poems. I've tried to be as true to these poems as possible without making this too emotionally difficult for people following the prompts. 1. The Curse. Imagine a curse that would substantially alter your life in a negative way. How would you navigate yourself in a world where that curse was happening to you?
2. He Wants To Know Why Sometimes In The Face Of Conflict... What do you do when you're faced with an uncomfortable moral conversation or situation? Do you ever sit back and evaluate why you have that response? Is there a historical logical reason? Do you wish your instinctive responses were different? 3. Ode To My Mother's Backhand. It's easy to write praise poems about the people we love, and poetically burn down the houses of those who hurt us. Unless you've been invited to a roast, I don't recommend writing a take down of someone you love. Instead, try and write something positive about something who hurt you. Feel free to stay away from major trauma, and maybe focus on someone who just slightly annoys you or who has caused inadvertant chaos in your life. Maybe someone who cut you off in traffic, or the acquaintance who unknowingly said something terrible about a person you care about. 4. Secret Written From Inside A Snake's Mouth. What is something you swallowed that you need to get out of you. Again, you can choose to go the traumatic route, but it can also be a guilty pleasure, or a secret that you've been holding on to for years for no discernable reason. 5. The Happy House. If the childhood home you lived in has been sold in the last twenty years, odds are good the real estate agent has put pictures of it online. Google Maps can show you what the outside and the yard look like now. Compare what you remember your house being like (feel free to use photos if you have them) with the way your house looks now. Don't involve people in the poem in any way, just use the physical changes in the house to tell the story. 6. A Good Life. Choose a villain. It can be a villain in your life, a famous villain of history, or a fictional character. Stripping away all judgement, present us with the basic story of their life. Don't remove any of the horrific acts they've committed, just don't use adjectives or metaphor to influence how the audience feels about them. Let the barest bones of their story give the audience everything they need to hate or fear this person of their own volition. 7. The Hunter, His Weapons. Is there a type of weapon you are an expert in? Or, at least, have some experience with? A gun, a knife, a bow and arrow, your mouth, a hammer. Without using an act of violence, tell us about this weapon. Is there anything positive you can do with it? Why are you so familiar with it? 8. Unkind Years. Ask a simple question. Between the subject and the direct object, present a series of scenarios or alternate questions that render the question irrelevant. 9. The Sociopath's Wife Meets The Wheel Of Death. Using a magician's tool as a metaphor, tell a story without a magician. 10. Secret Written From Inside A Coyote's Mouth. Waiting can be excruciating. What is the thing you felt you waited the longest for. Without ever telling your reader if the wait was worth it, describe how you waited. 11. One Winter While Unemployed. Definitively turn down a job offer. 12. Rearrangement Poem For The Mansplainer. Find a speech or internet comment or article that falls somewhere in the spectrum of making you uneasy to being filled with rage. Rearrange the words to completely alter the meaning. Don't change the tenses or leave out words. Let it be jagged. As long as it presents a new message. Either a complete change in the narrative, or a condemnation of the original meaning. 13. Frat Boy. Tell us a story about a time where you restrained yourself from committing violence or showing anger. Tell it from the perspective of the person whose actions you had to restrain yourself from responding to. 14. Casanova Comes To Dinner. When you write a poem, if you're lucky, you reach a point where you create a devestating line, which becomes your favorite part of the piece. Or, maybe you get an amazing line in your head, and that's where your poem comes from. For this experiment, freewrite something poetic, but feel free to give it more of a short story or essay feel than a poem. Make it at least a couple of pages long. The longer, the better. Now chop away every line that doesn't devestate you. It's ok if it feels choppy. Don't bridge the lines in any way. Just be left with your favorite parts of the poem. 15. The Summer Of Supplemental Income. A person walks into the room. You, initially find the person attractive. But the closer you look, the more frightening the person appears. Take us with you on this journey of observation. 16. Commodity. Write a pantoum about how things have changed as you've aged. 17. Question For The Boys Who Watched From The Window. Write out a dramatic scene on any subject. Include as much sensory memory as possible: sights, sounds, very specific images. Also use a variety of similes and metaphors to describe the events. When you feel satisfied with the story, go back and remove all the subject sentences, all of the "likes" and/or "as"es that you used for similes. Edit out everything that isn't an image or sensation. 18. Pack Hunt. There was a slam season a few years ago where everyone who ended up making the team representing our venue had, at one point, presented a poem in which a dog died. Injured or dead pet stories are always devestating. So, tell us a story about a pet in which it was never in any peril. And, please, let the animal be alive at the end. 19. Scene Written From Inside A Falcon's Mouth. Tell the reader about a time where you acted uncharacteristically. Look deeper into the situation, and see if you can discover that, maybe, at the core of the story, your uncharacteristic act is absolutely an essential part of your character. After reading through the first half of Solmaz Sharif's collection, Look, I've written out some prompts inspired by her poems. Like most of the prompts I provided, they desired outcome isn't intended to be that you have a bunch of poems similar to Sharif's. I usually glom on to a line or a concept that the author plays with. Or I might just be inspired to write a prompt based on the title that, in no way, reflects what the author wrote on the subject. I hope you find these helpful. Feel free to Tweet links to any poems you make from these prompts to CantabPrompts. 1. Look. Due to the instant access to current events that social media provides, more current existers are exposed to information about their country than ever before, which creates a much more decisive nation, no matter which nation that is. What is The Absolute Most you would endure from your country before you denounced it.
2. Battlefield Illumination. Using just one image, contained in one sentence, tell a complete story. 3. Lay. Tell us about an uncomfortable position you were in. Physically uncomfortable, not morally ambiguous. 4. Contaminated Remains. Create a detailed warning sign that you wish existed. It can be for something serious such as Rules For Interacting With Alligators In the Wild or something less literal like Guidelines For Interacting With My Overly Fragile Male Ego. 5. Safe House. Pick a dictionary page full of interesting words. Begin each line or stanza with a word from that page. Go in alphabetical order. 6. Deception Story. The doctor tells us the needle is not going to hurt. The bus driver tells you their bus is full but the next one is right behind theirs. The check is in the mail. There are lots of little lies people tell to make both you and themselves feel better. When was the last person someone told you a small deception that you immediately recognized as horseshit? Would you rather have had them tell you the truth? When was the last time you told one of these little rot lies? Do you think the other person believed you? Whom do these small deceptions serve? 7. Special Events For Homeland Security. Advertise or describe a party for a group of people based on a profession or hobby that you would absolutely Never Go To. 8. Dear Intelligence Journal. Write a letter to a piece of entertainment or literature that has, on some level, failed you. Tell it how it could have done better by you. 9. Free Mail. How has a group you belong to been misrepresented by society? This can be your gender, your race, your favorite fandom, your occupation, people with similar physicality, your ability, etc. Don't take the easy way out with this. Get really specific. 10. Force Visibility. Is there a word whose meaning you once knew that you, however briefly, couldn't remember. Does that speak at all to you? The person who used it? The situation in which the word was used? 11. Break Up. Write two poems on a similar subject. Create a their poem by allowing the two poems to converse with one another. Maybe alternate stanzas from each. Find some way to merge them into a poem with two distinct voices. 12. Ground Visibility. Create a poem out of a series of disjointed images. Don't bridge them with narrative exposition. Allow the images to tell the story on their own. 13. Desired Appreciation. We all have misconceptions about how being a certain age will change our relationship to the world. What did you think would change after your most recent Significant Birthday. Did it? Will this keep you from putting expectations on your next Significant Birthday? 14. Inspiration Point, Berkley. Maybe you know a painter named Barack Obama or a computer analyst named Stormy Daniels. Tell us about a person who has a famous name but isn't the famous person associated with the name. 15. Defenders/Immediate Family. Tell us about an unglamorous job you performed. Something that needed to be done but would be consider either/both gross or emotionally taxing. 16. Stateless Person. Tell us about a person mostly ignored by history. Perhaps the spouse or child of someone famous. Maybe an inventor of something vital to our society. Educate us. But, you know, poetically. 17. Family Of Scatterable Mines. Make a list of five unrelated possible destinations you might fly or long-distance-drive to: tropical vacation, wedding, funeral, family reunion, moving, etc. For each destination, detail what you would pack (feel free to be surreal or metaphysical). Each trip should have its own stanza, but don't let us know what your destination is, or the reason for your trip, let us guess based on what you've packed. 18. Master Film. Life is complicated and overwhelming almost all the time, right? Was it like this for our grandparents? Our ancestors several generations back? Imagine one of your ancestors between jobs or relationships. What was that like for them? 19. Expellee. Do you remember a time when you were sick as a very young child? Did you know what was going on around you or did it seem alien? 20. Mess Hall. Late twentieth century movies about childhood and coming of age would have you believe that every time kids shared a dining hall, a food fight erupted. I must have gone to the wrong schools. Do you have any memories involving dining halls or being in a restaurant with a large group of friends/acquaintances/coworkers? 21. Theater. When were you the most frightened you've ever been? You don't need to explain why, just focus on the details of the when. 22. Soldier, Home Early, Surprises His Wife At A Chick-Fil-A. What was the most inappropriate surprise you've ever received that didn't involve trauma? Mild embarrassment is okay, but the focus of this should be something that was more irritating or amusing than emotionally damaging. 23. Vulnerability Status. What's the most ridiculous facial expression/pose you've ever been in? Were you aware that it was unusual at the time, or was it pointed out to you? What events preceded it? Was the facial expression/pose ever repeated? Have you ever seen anyone else make something similar? 24. Reaching Guantanamo. Write a series of five letters to the same person. It should be a very personal series of letters. Once you are finished writing them, go back and white out/erase/somehow obscure the personal information that you wouldn't want to share with the world at large, or remove information you think the government would classify before sending the letters. While switching out bookcases this week, I found a pile of books that I had been missing since February. Many were books that I have already done interactions for, but one was Roll Deep by Major Jackson. As I think I'm ready to start reading poetry again, after a several month long hiatus, I decided to read this, simply as it was on the top of the pile. I'll probably do a few different types of interactions with it in the next few days, but I figured I'd start by making a series of prompts that each poem inspired. 1. Reverse Voyage. Tell a story about the place where you live that mainly focuses on the architecture and geography. Not just rolling hills, cracked pavement, the ocean. Tell us about the stores that have disappeared, the ugly yellow fence that is older than you are, the faded yellow lines in the middle of your street. What does the physical landscape tell you about what it's like to live there right now?
2. Greece. Give us the opposite of homesickness. Show your reader a place that is important to you by intertwining at least one piece of historical importance of the area, one specific memory involving you and another person (if there was one) while you were there, and a sprinkling of that time's meteorology (was it raining? were there birds? could you smell trees or the local capitalism?). 3. Spain. Layers of morning pastries flaked gingerly/then fell, soft as vowels, on a china plate. Get your simile on and describe a conversation using food imagery. It can be a disccussion that changed your life, or it can be about how bored you were on a first date. Make us hungry with the wish that we'd been there, or let us journey into the meal with you to escape the conversation. 4. Brazil. How we move in our day to day lives is our own form of dance and martial art. Tell us about a particular motion you do (if you can't think of one, ask someone who would notice this sort of thing about you to help you out) and how it signifies your relationship to your everyday life. 5. Kenya. Write a security briefing about part of your day. Identify the threats around you, and how you intend to avoid them, imagine which information you contain is most likely to be targeted for espionage, and point out any suspicious behavior you encounter. 6. Italy. If someone were dreaming of you, what would they be dreaming about? 7. On Disappearing. If you were to suddenly disappear from the place where you lived, how do you think people would speculate your absence? Would the place be significantly different without you? Would anyone figure out where you'd gone? 8. Mighty Pawns. Tell us about someone you know who is an expert at something not enough people value. Maybe they can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute. Maybe they make the best mashed potatoes ever eaten. Tell us about them, why their skill is so impressive to you, and why they would still be impressive even if they lacked that skill. 9. Dreams Of Permancence. Walk around your building or neighborhood until you discover something you haven't noticed before. Tell us about it in vivid detail. 10. Stand Your Ground. I'm not usually a fan of poems that address the nation or city or neighborhood we are from. Too often, they get so large of scope that they feel generic and trite. But you're a good writer. You can handle it. Address a poem to a place that is important to you. Tell it some things you appreciate, and some things it needs to repair. Bonus points if you can make it a Golden Shovel. 11. Thinking Of Our Shame At The Gas Pump. What would you like your last words to be? What do you think that says about your humanity? 12. OK Cupid. Get yourself blissfully lost in a simile/list poem. Make a statement about how one thing is like another thing and keep chaining similes until you feel like you're finished. Then continue for five or six more similes. 13. Calypso's Magical Garden. If you don't own your dreams, who does? What are they doing with them? 14. Aubade. What things do you wish you could be doing rather than trying, and failing, to sleep? 15. Special Needs. In the mornings, I rub my hands together/back and forth summoning the angels/away from the orthodoxy of façades. Damn. Tell us about a morning ritual you have, what it means to you, and what happens if you are unable to complete it. 16. Inscription. Imagine the object of you affection is a place, a ritual, a type of clothing, a meal, a time of day. Describe them only in metaphor. Don't tell us how you feel about them. Let the images do your emotional storytelling for you. 17. Night Steps. If you've never spent some time staring out a window at night, then maybe poetry isn't for you. What have you seen or not seen when zoning out, your eyes pointed at the outside world. 18. Cries & Whispers. Over the course of a day, write down three things that you're fairly sure you'd forget if you didn't write them down. Let that list sit somewhere for a week. Now come back and tell us whether or not those three things were important, and why. 19. On Cocoa Beach. Revisit your relationship to a place you hate or fear. Is the emotion you've tied to that place rational? Do you think you could overcome it? Why should you bother trying to overcome it when there other, less draining, places to go? 20. Ode To Mount Philo. How you travel through a place shows us a lot about your relationship to a place. If you take a subway through the city, you're going to have a different experience than walking, riding a bicycle, or driving a car. Take us on a small journey through a place that's important to you, using two different modes of transport. 21. Enchanters Of Addison County. Show us a place that's important to you as it travels through seasons. Even if you live somewhere equatorial, there is a difference between the winter and the summer. Physically, what changes about the important place? Are there different people there for different seasons? Does the way you feel about the place change as well? 22. Self-Portrait As The Allegory Of Poetry. What's in your trash can right now? Why? 23. Pathetic Fallacy. Ask a series of spiritual questions of yourself. Don't answer them. 24. Fundamentals. Write a three stanza poem where the first stanza is focused on something aural, the second stanza deals with how something is named, and the third stanza incorporates camera angles and perspective. 25. Canon Of Proportions. Tell us about a famous person born before the 20th century, and how they would interact with a piece of modern technology. For example, Jackson mentions that Thomas Jefferson was never a frequent flier. Tell us about Napoleon's arguments over fraudulent credit card charges, what games Mahatma Gandhi plays on his cell phone. 26. Energy Loves Here. Find an album or playlist that's important to you, and freewrite to it, occasionally making reference to images or lyrics that appear in the music. 27. Why I Write Poety. Let's assume you've already written a poem about why you write poety. Write a poem about what's keeping you from writing poetry more often. |
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