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
Rosie Johnston 