Hello poets! Even if you never wrote poetry before this challenge, you can now say that you “write poetry.” Because you do. Don’t stop now! Here’s your (optional) daily poetry prompt. And please remember to check out the prompts offered at NaPoWriMo.net. They have a fun one up today!
Random Word Challenge. Today, find your bowl or hat or jar with ten words in it. Choose one and write a line or two using that word. Choose another and do the same thing. Start a new stanza and choose two new words for that stanza. Maybe you’re finished. Or you can keep going and use more, maybe all, of the words if you like. Variations of words (slice/slicing/sliced/slices) are just fine.
Don’t like your words? Try a random word generator. If that seems too automated/impersonal, check out the beautiful images at A Bowl of Random Words. This is a trick you can use all the time. I jot down interesting words or phrases all the time and add them to a big Mason jar on my desk. My little fireflies. Maybe it only takes one word to get you started. Maybe you need to keep stringing on the bugs and casting your line.
I also highly recommend subscribing to the Merriam-Webster word of the day. You’ll find a new word in your inbox each morning.
Why do this to yourself? Wouldn’t it just be easier to write a poem without this extra challenge? Not necessarily. Constraints fire our creativity. Uncut freedom sometimes paralyzes it. Check out this article in the Harvard Business Review about Boosting Creativity Through Constraints. The author is a photographer who finds that his photos improve when he limits himself to a fixed lens camera. And he talks about how musician Jack White challenges himself by working with low-tech, low-quality instruments that he has to fight with to get the sound he wants.
Here are my 10 words and the poem I wrote using most of them.
stellar, bullets, crevice, sink, creeping, fernlike, unfurl, twist, fold, slice
Miura Fold
Your flesh repulsed bullets.
You drew a gold coin once,
from a crevice in the sidewalk,
taught yourself to jump from
sinking ships. Creeping things
drew radials, respected perimeters
all about you. You unfurled yourself,
fernlike, into the void.
But you could also fold yourself,
a solar panel, readied for space.
Mountain folds and valley folds.
Tessellations made perfectly flat.
On contact, slicing free even
of these constraints, you
gathered the light in your arms.