In Margate, my writing group reckoned that our senses are their favourite writing prompts and that visual prompts are particularly wonderful. The spirit of JMW Turner haunts the air and skies around here and the Turner Contemporary Gallery is just around the corner, so we’re not short of visual stimulus. In case you’re looking for images today, here are some photographs – happy writing.
In Cambridge yesterday though, the writers called for written prompts as well. These below are culled from the wonderful poetry anthology, The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes:
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good
But just to ask us who we think we are.
‘On a Tree Fallen Across the Road’, 1921, by Robert Frost
Before the sixth day of the next new year,
Strange wonders in this kingdom shall appear.
From ‘On the Cards and Dice’ by Sir Walter Raleigh, c 1553-1618
My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
Translation from Irish anon by Lady Augusta Gregory, 1852-1932
One of the pumps has been shot away – it is generally thought we are sinking
From ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman, 1819-1892
It was the evening all afternoon
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar limbs.
From ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ (any one of them could serve as a prompt) by Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955
The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said, ‘Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,
Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.’
From ‘The Angel that presided o’er my birth’ by William Blake, 1757-1827
Whatever works for you is your best prompt. Happy writing!
Rosie Johnston 