As usual, these prompts are not a task or exercise, just something – a few lines or as a whole – to blend into your thinking, so that when you’re ready to write for ten or fifteen minutes, something will come. Trust that, however long it is since you last had a chance to write, your words are waiting to fall onto your page or screen:

The sun is puce the sky is green

The streets awash with brilliantine

This is my redcurrant dream

(Recurrent? No just the once)

I’m psychedelicate

From John Cooper Clarke’s The Luckiest Guy Alive, 2018

I know a little cupboard,

With a teeny tiny key,

And there’s a jar of Lollipops

          For me, me, me.

From The Cupboard by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

This poem is dangerous: it should not be left

Within the reach of children, or even of adults

Who might swallow it whole, with possibly

Undesirable side-effects.

This Poem… by Elma Mitchell

‘This was Mr Strugnell’s room,’ she’ll say,

And look down at the lumpy, single bed.

‘He stayed here up until he went away

And kept his bicycle out in that shed.’

Mr Strugnell by Wendy Cope

The atheist archbishop weeps

Life is just a trap

Gazing into the inky deeps

Of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape

The Ranks of the Heathen Saints from John Cooper Clarke’s The Luckiest Guy Alive, 2018

Who will bring me the secrets of night?

‘I,’ called the Bat. ‘By the moon’s silver light.’

The Treasures by Clare Bevan