In an interview for the Poetry Society of America, Diane Seuss talks to Jennifer Franklin about how she writes with a keen awareness of the body as a site of both immense precarity and radical agency. When considering the role of structure in poetry, Seuss draws a parallel between the literary form and human form, how language can be compressed and lead through the formal constraints of a poetic form in the same way the human body can act as an impediment and a guide. “We write with all of ourselves,” she says, “at our best.” Write a poem that uses the structure of a poetic form to reflect on the nature of the body. Explore how the lyrical imagination pushes against structure, like the body “compresses the soul,” as Seuss describes. How does the inclusion of the body anchor your writing, and how might you play within these confines?
Writing Prompts & Exercises
The Time Is Now
The Time Is Now offers three new and original writing prompts each week to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also curate a list of essential books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend for guidance and inspiration. Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block, looking for a fresh topic, or just starting to write, our archive of writing prompts has what you need. Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners.
Tuesdays: Poetry prompts
Wednesdays: Fiction prompts
Thursdays: Creative nonfiction prompts
Get immediate access to more than 2,000 writing prompts with the tool below:
Jane Kenyon’s poem “Three Songs at the End of Summer” features three portraits of late summer, each evoking its own distinct sounds, moods, and atmosphere. The first section of the poem begins with “a second crop of hay” and “five gleaming crows,” continues through the sights and sounds of summer camp, and ends with a couplet that gestures to autumn: “Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts; / water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.” The second section consists of two three-line stanzas infused with the sound of cicadas, and in the final section, Kenyon explicitly reaches back in time to the speaker’s childhood and the scent of a damp dirt road on a foggy morning. Taking inspiration from this structure, write a three-part poem that explores a few resonant memories of the end of summer—fleeting images and sounds and smells of various activities. Experiment with sections of varying lengths to create dramatic effect.
In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Nitsuh Adebe speaks with a linguist about the ways in which words evolve over time, noting recent shifts in the use of terms like “POV” and “aesthetic,” especially in social media posts. “How people use a language is what the language is, and most everything we do in an effort to steer one another’s usage—teaching grammar, mocking errors, writing columns—is just an exercise of social power,” writes Abebe. Compose a poem that incorporates a word or phrase that has gained a new meaning in contemporary use, possibly through the rapidly changing landscape of language mediated, distorted, or abbreviated in texting and social media. What sorts of ingenuity, misinterpretation, and customization propelled your selection from its original definition to a new one? How might using it in a new poetic context subject it to an additional layer of meaning?
The machines are watching you . . . and they’re talking to each other. In an interview for Phaidon, Trevor Paglen, artist and author of How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI (Verso, 2026), speaks about how most images made in the world today are not centered around a human observer, but are made by machines for other machines. “A simple example is a self-driving car that is making tons and tons of images every second to navigate,” he says. “They’re not making those images for humans, they’re making them for themselves.” Spend some time imagining how a machine might “see” a photograph differently from how a human would, and write a poem with a particular image in mind. What might a machine notice or not notice? How might processing an image and communicating about it be different when we dispense with our conventional ideas of human emotional responses? Experiment with the way certain details are described and remembered.
Write a poem that begins with directions you cannot give, whether it’s returning to a childhood home that no longer exists, finding someone you’ve lost, or reaching a place that has only ever appeared to you in dreams. Let the poem move between the literal and the imagined, charting not only streets and landscapes, but also memories, misdirections, and silences. What landmarks have shifted? What details remain sharp? Allow the act of mapping to reveal both presence and absence, and bring the reader in on what it feels like to be in the place you want to bring them.
Poet and novelist Stacy Skolnik pieced together a series of Facebook posts from her old high school friend Robert Frost into a collaborative hybrid poetry collection, which is forthcoming from Book Works in June. In one of the collection's poems, the speaker expounds a moment of frustration after reading the signage outside a shopping area: “Can you believe this notice / in the middle of a seating and dining porch / it’s literally made for loitering // We have this seating area but NO ONE CAN USE IT!!!” Taking inspiration from themes that this poem touches upon—class, productivity, propriety—compose a poem of your own that meditates on what it means to loiter, which Merriam-Webster defines as “to remain in an area for no obvious reason.” What judgments do you make when you notice someone who appears to be loitering?
Fady Joudah, winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, writes that he thought about how animals process trauma without speaking and how “intifada deserves a good rhyme” when composing his poem “Pink Panther,” recently published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. The poem concludes with the stanza: “See cicada or when home is a howling / intifada. Your heart, utterly flexible, / a wind like water, / the stubborn wind.” This week, begin by creating a short list of words or phrases that you find yourself circling around in your work, perhaps indicative of themes at the forefront of your thoughts. Then, select one term that is particularly difficult to rhyme. Challenge yourself to think of rhyming words and ways to connect the terms, even if far-fetched. Build your poem around this innovative and unexpected rhyme pairing.
What sort of emotional labor does one experience when caring for a parent or a child, a friend or lover, or someone who’s ill? This week compose a poem that details the gestures and actions, the commitments and complications involved in taking care of someone else. In Angela Jackson’s poem “Caregiving,” published in the April 2023 issue of Poetry magazine, the speaker recalls a time before the responsibility of caretaking when she would “rumble-race” and “haul-dash” to the gym to exercise twice weekly, and contrasts that dynamism with the slowed-down, zoomed-in attention spent on the person she is looking after who is “sitting on the gray stoop / like a lost little girl.” In your own poem, think about the resulting sacrifices and rewards of caretaking, and consider how to express that through sound and rhythm.
“I love the hour before takeoff, / that stretch of no time, no home / but the gray vinyl seats linked like / unfolding paper dolls,” begins Rita Dove’s poem “Vacation,” which appears in her 2021 collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse. The poem follows the speaker’s thoughts and observations of others in the airport waiting at the flight gate, from the “ragtag nuclear families” to “the heeled bachelorette” to “the lone executive.” Taking inspiration from Dove’s poem, write a poem that takes place in an airport, infusing the piece with the dynamic energy of different people on the move, traveling and waiting, perhaps impatiently with nervous energy or exhaustion. How might the sounds and textures of the airport play a role in how the poem conveys the atmosphere?
“Zipping your skirt, you rustle past, / sand hissing through a glass, / with the bedouin snap and flash / of static-electric / sparks disturbing fabric.” In “Static,” which appears in Bright Thorn: Poems 2000–2026 by Devin Johnston, forthcoming in May from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, sound is a significant component of how meaning is expressed. The poet carefully observes a subject’s actions, capturing the ways in which a single movement or gesture can communicate a vast complexity of sentiment. From the tactility of fabric and the sibilant sounds and motions of “zipping” a skirt to the “sparks” of consonance, an intimate tone is set. Write a poem that employs a variety of sounds to convey the complex feelings within a resonant image or moment. How does the variance in sound and actions create a sense of productive tension?
In an essay recently published in the Evergreen Review, Eric Dean Wilson writes about discovering the playful use of metaphors in Robert Glück’s 1985 debut novel, Jack the Modernist. While considering what makes one work, Wilson recalls another writer teaching him about metaphor with a metaphor. “A metaphor, the writer said, is like a spark plug,” he says. “At just the right distance, the electrodes cause a spark to arc across the open air, igniting an explosion. The distance between the electrodes matters.” This week compose a poem that cycles through the process of creating an effective metaphor. You might start with the words, “A metaphor is like….” Allow yourself the freedom to play with language that might feel too convoluted as you gradually move toward the right combination to ignite a spark.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness,” which appears in her 1995 book, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, begins: “Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things….” The next two stanzas start similarly with: “Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness / you must travel…” and “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, / you must know sorrow….” Compose a three-stanza poem that takes a cue from this parallel structure, starting the first line of each stanza with: “Before you know _____, you must _____.” Think about a quality, such as kindness, that you highly value and how your understanding of it has changed over time. What are the lessons you have learned and what do you hope to pass on to others?
In a recent piece published on Literary Hub, Maggie Smith describes her writing space—the objects she considers talismans, the furnishings, and accessories that surround her as she works. Some notable items include: her clear desk from CB2, black Uni-Ball Vision Elite pens, an Audre Lorde postcard from a friend, a fortune cookie message, and a card from her high school English teacher. Compose a series of short poems that zero in on a few favorite tools or accoutrements that you like to use or have with you when you write. Include details of the brands, types, and personal touches of each item. What memories are associated with them? How can you combine functional physical descriptions in your verse with thoughtful reflections of what these objects bring to mind?
“Sometimes colors become points of departure to go into stories or anecdotes from things that I believe correspond to those colors,” says writer and comedian Julio Torres explaining the origins of his solo theater project, Color Theories, in an interview with Douglas Corzine published in the Brooklyn Rail last fall. In the show, Torres performs a memoiristic blend of stand-up and art lecture that “engages with the idea that colors are a form of classification, like saying something is a mineral, animal, or vegetable, something is either red or blue or yellow or green, et cetera.” Launching off from this idea, compose a series of short poems, each focusing on a different color. Incorporate ideas, moods, people, and abstract things in the world—such as systems or cultural concepts—that you associate with that color. How might vastly different objects and memories be categorized as the same color?
“You were almost apologetic when you said it today. / We were having coffee, checking e-mail, & the grapefruit / Juice shone with pulp,” begins Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s poem “I Might Not Be Here,” published this month in the New Yorker. The five words in the poem’s title have presumably been spoken by the narrator’s spouse, the “you” addressed throughout the poem, and the tension of those words hover over the scene. Later, the narrator remarks, “Five words / Stalk my future with you.” The poem shifts between details of the room where the words were uttered to thoughts related to senescence and the trajectory of love, life, and art. Write a poem that expounds on a short sentence that carries a lot of weight between two people. Recount details of the place in which the words were said to sit in the moment.
In Sanam Sheriff’s poem “The Emperor Pats His Lips with a Napkin,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, each line ends with renditions of the words, “object” and “subject,” a constraint the poet uses as a kind of outline. “Given that you are the object / of the emperor’s touch; given that you object // to his learnt repetition of love; given the abject / shame of a body entered by another body’s object // permanence,” begins Sherrif’s poem. Using a similar type of constraint, compose a poem that plays with different renditions of words that stem from the same or parallel roots. Play with the different verb tenses and homophonic meanings of your chosen words to paint your own portrait.
Alison McAlpine’s fifteen-minute-long documentary, perfectly a strangeness, follows a posse of three donkeys as they traverse the barren landscape of the Atacama Desert in Chile and happen upon an astronomical observatory on top of a mountain. While there is no dialogue, the movements of the donkeys, their expressive ears, and the mechanized motions of the observatory satellites, combined with the setting sun giving way to a night sky, offer an expansive range of interpretations and discovery. McAlpine, who was a poet before she was a filmmaker, says in an interview for Deadline, “Seeing these donkeys grazing besides these billion-dollar beasts, these metallic domes, I asked a question, how do they see this world?” Write a narrative poem without human presence that attempts to convey the perspective of an animal, or other living thing, discovering the universe for the first time. What diction seems most effective at producing the wonder you wish to evoke?
Published in n+1, Jynne Dilling writes a tribute piece to Michael Silverblatt, who died earlier this month and was the host of NPR’s Bookworm radio program for over three decades. Reflecting on his many insights, Dilling writes about an episode of the program in which Silverblatt talks to author David Mitchell about how stammering is a form of learning what to say. “Stammering is the language of the inner self,” says Silverblatt. “Before a writer does a final draft, the first draft is a form of stammering, trying to gum one’s way through the thing one doesn’t yet know how to say.” Compose a poem that begins as a stammer of sorts, in which you are learning how to say something that feels difficult or even impossible to articulate in language. How might holding on to parts of the stammering imbue your poem with valuable insights into your inner self?
Susan Stewart’s seventh poetry collection, Bramble, forthcoming in April from the University of Chicago Press, traverses a wide range of poetic forms and subjects—including progressions throughout nature, illness and grief, and Biblical allusions—striking tones that are elegiac, invocatory, conversational, and observational at various points. The collection’s title might be one way to connect interpretations of the pieces through their depictions of entanglement and struggle, the presence of thorny destruction, but also of protection and blossoming. Taking inspiration from Stewart’s Bramble, write a series of poems that uses the structure of a poetic form to reflect on a complicated aspect of your own life, whether related to family, romance, spirituality, your job, or your creative practice. Where in other works of literature has your metaphorical subject been used, and how has it functioned?
“I love snow and briefly. / I love the first minutes in a warm room after stepping out of the cold. / I love my twenties and want them back every day. / I love time. / I love people. / I love people and my time away from them the most.” In his poem “Love,” published in the American Poetry Review, Alex Dimitrov lists dozens of beloved things, each line beginning simply with, “I love.” The items listed often play off of each other and seem to meander associatively, in a stream-of-consciousness manner. Compose a poem that uses a list format to meditate on things you love. You might begin each line with a repeated phrase, or allow the entire poem to encompass one long list. Try experimenting with associative thinking, fluctuations of line length, and playful tones.
X. J. Kennedy, winner of the 2015 Jackson Poetry Prize who died at the age of ninety-six on February 1, was known for verses which often incorporated rhyming couplets and light humor. The title poem from his debut 1961 collection, Nude Descending a Staircase, is based on Marcel Duchamp’s painting of the same name and is made up of three short stanzas, beginning with: “Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh, / a gold of lemon, root and rind, / she sifts in sunlight down the stairs / with nothing on. Nor on her mind.” Taking inspiration from this style, select a few works by a favorite artist—whether paintings, sculptures, films, or music—and compose a series of short poems that make use of end rhymes, and perhaps traditional forms of an ode, ballad, elegy, or sonnet. How might deploying a surprising twist of humor inject the poems with a sense of playful energy?
In “Object Loss,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 2012), Sharon Olds touches upon the emotions brought up from objects that were formerly tied to a romantic partner—a clock, a chair, a table. These physical items exemplify the metaphysicality of human connection. “As I add to the stash which will go to him,” writes Olds, “I feel as if I’m falling away / from family—as of each ponderous / object had been keeping me afloat. No, they were / the scenery of the play now closing, / lengthy run it had.” Jot down a list of objects that you’ve held on to from people you’ve loved in the past. Compose a poem that incorporates several of those items, taking care to describe their physical attributes. What sentiments did they evoke while in the act of parting, and after?
Ilya Kaminsky begins his poem “Psalm for the Slightly Tilted,” which was published this week in the New Yorker, with the lines: “This is not / a good year. / But it has / witnesses.” In this first month of the new year, compose a poem that begins with “This is a ____ year,” or perhaps “This is not a ____ year.” In Kaminsky’s poem, he explores protest, revolution, and resistance, deploying imagery of things that are slightly askew: a question mark, bent spoons, off-rhythm chants, and people leaning and lopsided. Think of how you would characterize the year based on these first weeks, considering what’s happening in your own life, and in political and global events. What sort of imagery might characterize the sentiments or mood of this month?
“i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to / anymore, maybe my gut— // maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.” In “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” by Renée Nicole Good, a poet and mother who was fatally shot by an ICE agent earlier this month, the speaker contemplates a struggle between science and faith. Good won a 2020 prize from the Academy of American Poets for the poem, and guest judge Rajiv Mohabir spoke about what resonates with him in a recent Newsweek article: “What does it mean to define something until there is no wonder left? The poem asks me. The speaker in the poem has no answers, just experiences that illuminate the tensions that arise when trying to reconcile wonder against brutality.” Write a poem that is situated between the opposing tensions of wonder and brutality. Is there a point at which definition and description are overwhelming?
Catchy lyrics are often the reason popular songs get stuck in our heads, although sometimes the lyrics take on a life of their own. John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1982 hit song “Jack & Diane,” a “little ditty” about a young American couple, includes the line, “Suckin’ on a chili dog outside the Tastee-Freez,” a striking description of a scene that has inspired multiple comedic covers of the song in which the chili dog phrase is repeated over and over. Jot down a list of phrases from songs that have gotten stuck in your head, perhaps because of a certain oddness or seemingly nonsensical nature paired with evocative imagery. Write a poem that begins with the lyric, allowing associations and context from the song to mingle with what your personal memories bring to the words.