Poetry Writing Prompts

All poetry prompts

Every poetry prompt in the set — tapUse this to load one into the generator above.

• Write a poem in the voice of the last streetlight on a road that no longer leads anywhere.Use this
• Describe the color of a sound you heard only once. Refuse to name the sound until the final line.Use this
• Write about a house settling at night as if the walls are remembering everyone who ever leaned against them.Use this
• Compose a poem where every stanza loses one word it had in the stanza before, until almost nothing is left.Use this
• Write to the version of yourself who is asleep right now, and tell them what they missed.Use this
• A single ice cube melts on a kitchen counter over the course of the poem. Let time do the work.Use this
• Write a poem that is a set of instructions for folding grief into something small enough to carry in a pocket.Use this
• Describe a river that has forgotten which direction is downhill.Use this
• Write about the moment a photograph is taken, from the point of view of the light entering the lens.Use this
• Compose a poem made entirely of things your grandmother said that you did not understand until years later.Use this
• Write about the specific silence of a phone that has stopped ringing for good.Use this
• A crow lands on a wire outside a hospital window. Write the poem it does not know it is holding.Use this
• Write a poem in which winter arrives inside a single room while it is still summer outside.Use this
• Describe your hands as if they belonged to a stranger you are meeting for the first time.Use this
• Write about the last apple left on a tree in November, and what it is waiting for.Use this
• Compose a poem where the ocean is trying to apologize but keeps saying the same thing.Use this
• Write to a door you have opened ten thousand times, and thank it for something specific.Use this
• Describe the exact weight of a word you never said out loud.Use this
• Write a poem in which a map slowly becomes the territory it was trying to describe.Use this
• A moth circles a porch light all night. Write the argument it is having with itself.Use this
• Write about the smell of rain arriving before the rain does, and what your body remembers when it comes.Use this
• Compose a poem addressed to the color of the sky at the exact minute you were born, which you cannot possibly recall.Use this
• Write about an empty chair at a table set for a meal that already happened.Use this
• Describe the sound a key makes when it no longer fits the lock it was cut for.Use this
• Write a poem that begins the moment a candle is blown out and ends when the smoke disappears.Use this