Poetry Prompt
A Sense of Home
By Subhaga Crystal Bacon
This prompt has a special place in my heart because it was passed along to me by my beloved late friend, the brilliant poet Jennifer Martelli. I’m sure Jenn found it somewhere, possibly in one April’s poem-a-day options. Over the years, it’s become a prompt I’ve come back to again and again because it’s so wonderfully generative.
What I like about it is that it builds on any number of things that might, on their own, “prompt” a poem. Each of the elements to be included is something that might generate new writing: discovering a lost or forgotten item; mythology; the view outside a familiar window; how a word got its meaning; or a quote from a book. Combining these things into one poem gives the writer many points of entry. You don’t have to start with the forgotten item or make the eighth line what you see outside. You might read a quote that strikes a chord and jump off there. Or if you’re a word nerd like me, you might find yourself drawn to a word’s history and lineage and build a poem around that. Maybe you end with where you are in a way you hadn’t seen before.