Your Own Poem Prompts: Tools for Endless Ideas

This article is for: Everyone!

When we’re struggling for ideas, we often turn to outside sources—websites, friends, or teachers—and look for prompts.

And this is a very good idea! Prompts tend to work very well. As a workshop leader myself, I often see prompts turn writers with no ideas into writers with passion and inspiration.

But it can be kind of annoying to have to seek out prompts like this. What if no one’s available right then to give you a prompt, or you can’t find a good one online?

So in this article I thought I’d give you a gift that never ends:

Secrets of how to make your own poem prompts!

That way, whenever you feel stuck for ideas, my hope is that you can turn to these principles and create a poem prompt that get you fired up and ready to write.

Why are prompts helpful?

There’s one simple answer to this:

(cue spine-chilling music)

THE BLANK PAGE...

The blank page seems to be every writer’s nightmare.

In theory, it ought to be a wonderful thing: an open space of unlimited adventure, possibility, and excitement.

BUT, all too often, it really is the opposite. Instead of speaking of options and joy, it whispers to us about problems, doubts, shortcomings, and futility.

And if you think it’s just you who has this problem, or even just less experienced poets, think again!

Mekeel McBride, one of my teachers at UNH, told us a story of when Charles Simic called her up in the middle of the night. “The blank page,” he said. “Always the blank page.” And then he hung up.

And yes, that’s the Charles Simic, former Poet Laureate of America and author of literally dozens of books of poems. If even he was feeling the pain and dread of the blank page, don’t feel so bad if you do too!

So this is why we love prompts:

Prompts take away the terror of the blank page.

When you have a prompt, instead of approaching that open space with fear, you go into it buzzing with ideas and prospects.

And this is one reason why people pay good money to teachers such as myself, who give you prompts!

But wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to make prompts yourself, so that you never again feel lost or stuck? Here’s how you can do that!

Ways to make yourself a good prompt

1. Look around you

If you’re stuck for a subject, why not start with what’s under your nose?

Open your eyes (and ears, and nose, etc.) and check out what the world’s offering you.

Right now, I see:

Sun
Snow
Drips of melt on windows
Clouds
Furniture (bookcases, desks)
A hat
A heater
Internet cables

Could I turn one of those into a topic for a poem? They may not at first seem very exciting, but if I take a moment to explore one of them a bit, I bet I could find the seed of a poem.

For example, the heater makes me think of various different ways of heating houses I have experienced, in various countries: radiators, woodstoves, open fires, storage heaters, space heaters…. And each of these kinds of heating brings to mind a place and an era in my life, that perhaps I could write about:

The storage heaters in my first shared house in London: cheap to run and toasty warm in the morning, but utterly useless by evening, leading to a cold and inhospitable feeling by dusk. This is not a bad image for my whole time living in London—hope and excitement to cold bleakness! That could be the start of a poem.

So already I can feel ideas flowing, just by paying attention to very ordinary things around me.

If your room doesn’t do it, try going for a short walk. Pay really good attention to what you see—I bet you’ll find potential poems everywhere!

2. Be (More) Specific

It might seem that prompts should be open-ended , to allow space for any ideas, but actually it doesn’t work that way.

When you constrict your prompts by making them specific, they actually create more possibilities.

Open-ended prompts are not much help if you’re stuck, because they don’t bring new ideas into your minf.

But by introducing some particular new information, a specific prompt plants a seed that can grow.

Once you’ve got one thought happening it’s much easier to connect it to another thought—and another, and another, and another. Until you have a poem!

Suppose I chose to write about hats. But before I get going, I choose to spend a little time making my “hat” idea more specific, like this:

Hats that don’t fit
A hat that’s being used in a way that was never intended by its maker
Stolen hats
Hats that express their wearer in unexpected ways
A hat that’s out of place, in the wrong place
Hats that hold memories.

These are only a little more specific than the original topic of just “hats,” but already they’re stirring more for me:

I could make up a character who’s forced to perform a job (with a hat!) they don’t like.
I could make a list of alternative uses for hats (nest box, yogurt strainer, deadly weapon?) and see what happens.
Could I write about someone in power whom I dislike as having stolen a hat, make this a metaphor for them misusing their power? Yes, reckon I could!

So, adding specificity to a topic can help a lot to get ideas going.

On the other hand, it is also possible to go too far with the specifics.

If I said, “Write about a red hat that’s made of straw and was bought in Greece and is now creased and lost in an attic but might one day be valued again,” I think I would have trouble.

There are already too many details in this prompt, so my imagination doesn’t feel the need to create more! This prompt kills inspiration instead of inviting it.

3. Use a Friend—Found Language

As I said at the start, a great way to get a prompt is to ask a friend for one.

(And if they say something general such as “walruses,” you can use the Specificity approach to make it a bit more exciting: Someone who is like a walrus—Why? How? Or, Why would walruses be better at running the planet than us?).

Look, I hope you have some friends, and that you can call on them for ideas! But this article is in case you can’t do that.

So let’s talk about another kind of friend.

What did Charles Simic do when he was faced with the blank page (apart from waking up Mekeel Mac Bryde)? He used someone else’s language..

He would search books, magazines, or whatever was around, to find a phrase he could use to get started.

This is very easy to do.

Pick up a book, magazine, flyer, cereal box, or anything with words, and look for a phrase (or phrases) that speaks to you.

Then put those phrases at the top of your page, and see where your ideas go.

For example, I happen to have a Chemistry textbook in my bookcase (I am not sure why), so I open it up, and find this sentence almost immediately: “Ethers, like alcohols, can be viewed as structural derivatives of water.”

Not only have I just learned something, I’ve also received at least two ideas I can work with:

I love the phrase “structural derivative of…” What else could be a structural derivative of something? Is love a structural derivative of hate (or vice versa)? Is divisive speech a structural derivative of social media? And I’m off…
The ironic closeness of alcohol to water, seeing how different are their effects.

You might need to read and search for a bit longer that that, but keep looking!

And once you’ve started your poem, you can drop that piece of found language, or keep it in the poem, as you choose.

4. Bang Two Ideas Together

In her excellent book The Creative Habit, Choreographer Twyla Tharp says something like this:

With one idea, you’ve got an idea. With two ideas, you’ve got a project.

Adapting that slightly, I might say:

With one topic, you’ve got a topic. With two, you’ve got a poem.

When two ideas collide, magical things can happen.

For example, suppose you’ve been out for a walk and seen a car. Big deal? Well, what if you combine the idea of a car with one of these topics as well:

Horse
Dress
Oil rig
France
Hurricane
Trampoline

You might remember that night drive across France when you were 21.

You might think of your parents’ first date, the dress your mother wore and the car your dad picked her up in.

You might imagine what horses would say about cars, if they could.

Or how horse riders viewed cars in 1909.

In other words, sparks emerge!

This is also a great way to add richness to ideas you find in found language or the world around you.

Find several ideas, then bang pairs of them together until something happens.

And if all else fails, look up lists of common nouns in English—they’re simple but powerful words like “knife” and “moon” that will surely inspire you eventually

5. Another kind of help—Photographs

Photos are endlessly evocative because they give us just a tiny fragment of an experience. Then we naturally start to make up the rest of the story for ourselves.

Hey presto, poem right there, telling the story behind the photo.

Or sometimes a photo can suggest an image or a mood, which then leads to more thoughts…

Again, poem!

6. Yet another kind of help—Another Art Form

Don’t fancy photographs? You could listen to some music, or admire that hand-thrown ceramic jug on your pantry shelf.

Any kind of art or craft object has immense potential to give you ideas, because it has already been someone else’s idea.

it already contains their inspiration, if you like, ready to transmit to you.

7. Use An Object

Lastly, almost any humble object can give you an idea for a poem, if you examine it closely enough and think for a while.

Take the plastic water bottle on your desk. Have you ever thought about:

The evolution of containers we’ve used to put water in? Gourds, animal skins, amphorae, glass bottles, plastic bottles...?
The journey the water goes on to get to you?
The journey the plastic went on to get to you?
Looking through the plastic, how commerce and money bend our perceptions of our needs?

Seems to me that one of these has potential to make a poem! I’d probably write the last one. No, maybe the first one. No, the last one… or both!

So with these 7 ways to make your own prompts, I hope you’ll never feel the Terror of the Blank Page ever again!

And that you will never, never, get the urge to call up Mekeel McBride in the small hours of the morning…

Next Steps

Wherever you are right now, take a look around you, and write down 5-10 things you can see, hear, or smell.
Make pairs of your words with words on this list: bed, bear, window, cupcake, angry, ghost, light, cloud.
Choose one pair of words that sounds promising, and develop the idea by asking questions.
For example, if you have “shoe ghost,” ask yourself, whose shoe? Whose ghost? What does the ghost want with the shoe? Is the shoe being thrown at the ghost? What is it like to wear a haunted pair of shoes? And anything else you can think of!
From those ideas, do a Freewrite or a Cluster.
Then start a poem draft.