Past Rattlecast Prompts
March 2nd (subs won’t open until March 9th): Write a poem about the happiest place on earth.
February 23rd: Write a poem that includes an unexpected vow.
February 16th: Write a poem that includes a memory you’ve never shared. Include dialogue.
February 9th: Write an elegy that’s not about a person.
February 2nd: Write a poem that explores the perspective of the other side, and arrives somewhere opposite to where the poem begins.
January 26th: Write a poem with a title that begins with “Poem in Which I” after Denise Duhamel. For the next word in the title, find a random verb on randomwordgenerator.com.
January 19th: Think of a word that transports you back to childhood, and give the poem that title.
January 12th: Write a poem in which something is overfilled. Include as many tactile details as possible.
January 5th: Write a pantoum that references your favorite shape.
December 29th: Write a poem that includes a wish for the New Year and features a sound you’ve never written in a poem before.
December 15th: Recall a time that you acted poorly during winter, and write a poem that crafts a different resolution to the incident.
December 8th: Think of a time you traveled. Write a poem that reimagines that journey but set in a different time period.
December 1st: Write a triolet that includes a bird.
November 24th: Write an ode to the first thing you remember being thankful for.
November 10th: Write a braid poem in which three or more stories are woven together.
November 3rd: Pick a photographic portrait featuring someone you don’t know personally, and write a short poem that explores their story.
October 27th: Write a poem in which someone wears a costume. Include as many sounds as possible.
October 20th: Write a poem in the first person perspective in which something is repaired with the use of a most unlikely tool.
October 13th: Write a villanelle that mentions your favorite season. Make each refrain slightly different.
August 25th: Use the random feature on Wikipedia twice to find two articles. Write a poem about one of the topics, and use the other as the title.
August 18th: Write a poem with your least favorite word to see in a poem as the title. Include an explanation of why it’s your least favorite in the submission note.
August 11th: Write a hot haiku sequence.
August 4th: Write a poem that directly references your favorite theatrical play.
July 28th: Write a poem that features multiple unexpected turns, leaps, or voltas.
July 21st: Write journalistic poem that explores the sensory details of where you live.
July 14th: Write a traditional ghazal that references at least one other poet. When submitting, please include the name of the poets referenced in the submission note.
July 7th: Write a poem set on a specific road or path.
June 30th: Write an elegy for something that was in your home.
June 23rd: Write an extended metaphor poem that features a celestial body.
June 16th: Write a poem set in a place you’ve always dreamed of going to but never have. Allude to all the basic senses.
June 2nd: Write an ode to something that doesn’t conform to typical ode topics and begins with an epigraph.
May 26th: Write a poem using a regular meter of some kind that references your ancestral home.
May 19th: Find a partner and write a collaborative poem in some kind of form.
May 12th: Pull a random card from a deck and write a poem about it.
May 5th: Write a golden prose poem: one that includes the words from your favorite haiku but goes in a different direction.
April 28th: Write an ekphrastic poem about your favorite painting.
April 21st: Write a poem to share on social media about what poetry means to you.
April 16th: Write a poem with a single word as the title, in which our understanding of that word shifts by the end of the poem.
April 9th: Write a poem that uses internal rhyme in every line.
April 1st: Write a poem set in spring that includes personification.
March 25th: Write a poem from the perspective of one of your childhood toys.
March 18th: Write a short poem that explores someone else’s awe.
March 11th: Write a “golden” sestina or tritina: start with an epigraph from another poem, and use six (or three) words from that quote as the end-words of your sestina or tritina.
March 4th: Write a “What to Do if …” poem about what to do in an unusual situation.
February 26th: Revise a poem that you wrote a long time ago by radically shifting its perspective.
February 19th: Write a haiku sequence that talks about love without mentioning it by name.
February 12th: Write a song of someone or something, as a persona poem 32 lines long.
February 5th: Write a poem entitled, “A Brief History of [X],” where X is a word that needs to be translated, and the poem is less than a page.
January 29th: Write a poem that tells a story about a silent interaction with a stranger.
January 22nd: Write a villanelle that opens with an epigraph.
January 15th: Write a poem that focuses on a color and a scent.
January 8th: Write a poem that uses extended metaphor to describe a period of your life, and use a rhyme scheme of some kind.
January 1st: Look at an old family photograph, and find an object in the background that you hadn’t noticed before. Write a poem about it.
December 26th: Write a poem that includes multiple lists.
December 18th: Move through an unnatural environment and describe it as though you were writing a nature poem.
December 11th: Write a poem that begins with an idiomatic expression that you take literally or incorrectly, and see where it goes.
December 4th: Write a poem about a childhood pain, and use a refrain.
November 27th: Write and epistolary poem (i.e., a letter) to someone you are thankful for.
November 20th: Write a “how-to” poem about something you don’t know how to do.
November 13th: Write a sonnet with the title “The End of _____ Is Not _____” after Jamaica Baldwin’s American sonnet, “The End of Sorrow Is Not Happiness.”
November 6th: Write a poem that features a shadow.
October 30th: Write a poem about one of your fears.
October 23rd: Write a poem about a museum for an abstract concept, using one of the forms Maryann read: ghazal, villanelle, call and response, or alliterative. Title it “The Museum of ______.”
October 16th: Write an assay—a poem that breaks down an idea or topic into it’s constituent parts.
October 9th: Write a poem set in the first place you ever worked.
October 2nd: Pick an inanimate object and trace the evolution of your relationship with it throughout your life. Title it with the name of that object.
September 25th: Write a haibun that mentions time.
September 18th: Write a poem that refers to another poem and starts immediately after the events in that poem.
September 11th: Write a one sentence poem that includes two truths and a lie.
August 28th: Write a sonnet with a number in it.
August 21st: Pick a single word at random from the dictionary and use that as the title of a poem in which someone gets their hands dirty.
August 14th: Write a villanelle that includes a cryptid (mythological figure, such as the Loch Ness Monster).
August 14th: Write a villanelle that includes a cryptid (mythological figure, such as the Loch Ness Monster).
August 7th: Write a poem that’s a letter to your favorite poet. Include a suggestion.
July 31st: Write a poem in which something is cooked.