Poetry Prompts for Poem in Your Pocket Day

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day.  Will I carry a poem in my pocket today?  Most of my clothes have no pockets.  I have tried to get in the habit of taking a volume of poetry with me to meetings.  Many of our meetings start late, and I have a few minutes to dip in and out of a book, to read a poem or two.

I started my Poem in Your Pocket Day by finishing a poem I started in early March.  My friend has suffered quite a trauma, a house fire.  I'm hopeful that she'll survive and create art out of it.  She will be happy simply to have her life return to normal.

A few months ago, she wrote this blog post, which I thought was quite poetic and made me hope that she gets a memoir out of this experience, in later years, when she can bear to return to it.

I saw her blog post and on Feb. 29, I wrote to some local writer friends:

"So, feel like writing a poem? Want a prompt? I've been thinking about ashes of all sorts, which led me to this prompt:


write a poem that uses imagery from _____'s burned house--or any house of your choosing, burned or whole--and your religious tradition, however you want to define that. Bonus points for including mythology or fairy tales.

Sure, you'll say that I have it easy, having celebrated Ash Wednesday last week.

Happy Poetry Play!"

Yes, I'm only just now finishing the poem.  Such is the Spring I have had.

Perhaps you don't like that prompt?  Here's another.  A friend burned a CD for us, with a Doc Watson album on it.  My favorite song from that CD had this line:

"What does the deep sea say?
It moans and it groans
and it thrashes and it foams
and it rolls on its weary way"

The ocean as weary--I usually think of the ocean as being nourishing or mighty or any number of other adjectives but never weary!

So, today I'll write a new poem, prompted by that lyric and that question, "What does the deep sea say?"

Other ways to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day:

Put a poem in the lunches that you pack for loved ones.

Leave poems in random places, like a bench or a grocery store shelf.

Tuck a poem into a ream of paper in the copy room.

Leave a poem on the desk of a coworker.

Write poems as after school or evening activity.

Read a poem at a meal.  Contemplate--or discuss with others, if you're lucky enough to have dining companions.