April is National Humor Month, which means it’s the perfect time to be reminded that everyone has a funny bone. The annual observance was conceived to heighten public awareness of the therapeutic value of humor, laughter, and joy. This week, consider what others have said about your sense of humor over the years. Does it lean toward puns or dad jokes? Is it witty or dark, laconic or bizarre, goofy or lighthearted? Write a short series of poems that showcases your specific sensibility around amusement and how you value humor and joy in your life. You might find it helpful to recount recent experiences and images that made you chuckle or guffaw and try to manifest in your poem what specifically made you laugh out loud.
Writing Prompts & Exercises
The Time Is Now
The Time Is Now offers three new and original writing prompts each week to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also curate a list of essential books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend for guidance and inspiration. Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block, looking for a fresh topic, or just starting to write, our archive of writing prompts has what you need. Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners.
Tuesdays: Poetry prompts
Wednesdays: Fiction prompts
Thursdays: Creative nonfiction prompts
Get immediate access to more than 2,000 writing prompts with the tool below:
In a 2023 BOMB Magazine interview by Wendy Xu, she asks Emily Lee Luan about the cinematic, image-specific aesthetic of the poems in her collection 回 / Return (Nightboat Books, 2023). “I think my poems try to understand internal emotional change through the external world—that might be why image and scene are so central,” says Luan. “If you look at something for long enough, then you might be able to understand what’s happening within you.” Take inspiration from this juxtaposition between interiority and externality, and the notion of finding understanding and connection through prolonged observation, and write a poem that uses extensive imagery to reflect the speaker’s internal emotional state. In lieu of expository description, how does imagistic expression lend a different kind of dynamism to your work?
Over the course of Rita Dove’s three-stanza prose poem “Prose in a Small Space,” the speaker meanders through a sequence of questions, observations, and digressions, periodically returning to the functionality of the prose poem form itself. “Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasta,” writes Dove. This week, forgo the options of line breaks and nonstandard grammar of more conventional poetry, and compose a series of short prose poems that take greater advantage of other poetry elements—rhythm, prosody, diction, pacing, and sensory details. Allow your prose to “hear itself talk,” develop, and conclude.
Can a poem calm the nerves? Whether it’s reading, listening to music, meditating, taking a walk, or observing the natural environment, consider the activities and sensory experiences that bring you some peace of mind. Compose a poem with diction, rhythm, imagery, and sentiments that evoke a state of tranquility. You might prepare by initially jotting down a list of words, phrases, and tidbits of sensory details, including specific sounds and types of words that align with your serene tone. Be open and allow yourself to be honest—and even playful—about what calms you down.
Australian author Gerald Murnane talks about being drawn to the “bewildering and at the same time satisfying feeling” of getting lost in familiar places in an interview in the Winter 2024 issue of the Paris Review. “I can very readily get myself lost in strange country towns or on back roads,” Murnane says, “knowing all the time where I am, that there’s no threat to my safety, that I can navigate myself home eventually.” Write a poem that explores the state of being lost, whether from a memory of a childhood incident, visiting a town, walking a new route, or perhaps from simply feeling lost in a chaotic or difficult situation. Amidst the bewilderment, are you able to find something you enjoy about being lost?
According to the Oxford English Corpus, a text corpus of twenty-first-century English with over two billion words collected from online and print sources produced by Anglophone countries, time, person, year, way, and day are the top five most common nouns in the English language. Browse through lists of the most common words, whether nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, or articles. Instead of making use of unusual language, write a poem that revolves around playing with the most common ones. Experiment with how you might be able to manipulate unconventional repetition, syntax, spacing, or grammar to express fresh and unexpected meanings.
In a recent video, Maggie Millner, Yale Review senior editor and author of Couplets: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), speaks about her favorite love poems, including June Jordan’s short poem “Resolution #1,003,” which she says “illustrates the way that love between two people can inspire a politics, a kind of political vision.” Spend some time thinking about the relationships in your life and who might inspire in you a sort of political vision. Write a poem that captures how to “love who loves me” and “stay indifferent to indifference,” as Jordan writes in her poem. How might the circumstances, breadth, and boundaries of your adoration for someone be political?
Did you know that the word robust comes from the Latin word robur meaning “oak tree?” Merriam-Webster’s “12 Words Whose History Will Surprise You” provides the fascinating etymological history of words such as boudoir, phlegm, amethyst, and assassin, essentially mini lessons demonstrating an English word’s linguistic origins from an assortment of languages, including Medieval Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, and Middle English. Jot down a list of some of your favorite nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and look up their origin stories. (Tip: Merriam-Webster often lists a word’s etymology in the “Word History” section.) Write a poem inspired by this newly discovered and intriguing story behind the language, incorporating past iterations of the word into your verse.
Edges of Ailey is an immersive exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art centered around the twentieth-century choreographer, dancer, and artist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The show spotlights multimedia presentations of Ailey’s work, recorded footage, notebooks and drawings, as well as works that inspired Ailey and have been inspired by him in the forms of literature, music, and visual art. Write a poem centered on movements of the body, whether a creative motion like a dance move or the everyday, repetitive motion of carrying out a task. Allow yourself the freedom to experiment with page space—choosing different sizes or styles of script, incorporating small drawings or cutouts—to create a collage-like piece.
In a Sight and Sound magazine interview from last November, filmmaker David Lynch, who passed away earlier this month, was asked about the inspiration for his latest album with longtime collaborator Chrystabell. Publicity materials for the album described how Lynch experienced a mysterious, revelatory vision while out for a nighttime walk in the woods. In the interview, Lynch admits this revelation isn’t quite what happened, but that he does “walk in the woods in my mind.” Jot down notes about the type of atmosphere, shape, mystery, or emotions you associate with a walk in the woods, and how might you “walk in your mind.” Allow your imagination to wander freely into any shadowy corners. Then, compose a poem that results from this creative exercise.
Ariel Francisco’s poem “On the Shore of Lake Atitlán, Apparently I Ruined Breakfast,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poet-a-Day series, recounts a puckish remark which derails the upbeat mood of a meal with the speaker’s mother and aunt. Commenting about the poem, Francisco acknowledges his teenage immaturity returning to him as an adult on this trip to Guatemala, his mother’s homeland. “This poem tries to capture what I often do in real life: upend a beautiful moment with something flippant,” he says. This week write a poem that attempts to capture a tendency you have, perhaps one that you’ve been self-critical about in your life. Francisco’s poem strikes a lighthearted tone throughout, which you might decide to mirror, or you could magnify your behavior’s ultimate consequences for a dramatically darker note that turns unexpectedly bright.
“One must have a mind of winter,” begins Wallace Stevens’s 1921 poem “The Snow Man,” which moves from describing iconically icy and desolate imagery of winter—“the pine-trees crusted with snow,” “the junipers shagged with ice”—to pointing out the human beholder’s subjectivity as the agent who projects this wintry outlook. This week, write a poem that takes inspiration from Stevens’s first line and explore what it means to you to have “a mind of winter.” Does it entail nothingness, quietude, withholding, generosity, cheer, beauty, love? How does your selection of seasonal associations determine your poem’s tonal direction? You might even experiment with approaching this prompt more than once, when your mood about the season feels distinctively different.
Just last month, the bald eagle officially became the national bird of the United States, signed into law by President Biden. Though its official status is new, the bald eagle has long served as an emblem of the country, depicted on the Great Seal and on coins and bills for much of the twentieth century—a symbol of strength, courage, freedom, and independence. Many U.S. states use reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, and even dinosaurs as their symbols. This week research and consider the various animal emblems and symbols in your midst and choose one to write a poem that draws a personal connection to the animal’s symbolic meaning, whether real or imagined. As you triangulate a relationship between yourself, an animal symbol, and a physical location in this way, explore any unexpected thematic directions within your poem.
In her 2022 New York Times essay “The Shape of the Void: Toward a Definition of Poetry,” Elisa Gabbert writes about what makes language poetic. “I think poetry leaves something out,” she writes. “The missingness of poetry slows readers down, making them search for what can’t be found.” Write a poem that revolves around this idea of missingness and leaving something out. To facilitate a mindset of absence, you might choose a subject—a childhood memory, a relationship dynamic, a strange occurrence—that feels inherently cryptic, incoherent, or mysterious. Consider playing with line breaks, spacing, syntax, and diction, to make what’s absent hyper-present. How do the words on the page gesture toward the shape of what can’t be found?
In Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume, a septology whose first two books translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland were published in November by New Directions, the protagonist is an antiquarian bookseller residing with her husband in France, who suddenly begins reliving the same day over and over again—a mysterious and seemingly endless predicament that creates a spectrum of conflicts in her life. Write a poem that imagines this Groundhog Day premise. Choose a particular day in your life that’s significant to you, and then write into the possibilities and quandaries that arise as the same day, and same actions, recur endlessly. In your imagination, what transpires when you know exactly what will happen each day while everyone else around you repeats their steps? How can you play with replicating the repetition in verse form?
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- / dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / Of the rolling level underneath him steady air,” begins Gerard Manley Hopkins’s 1877 poem “The Windhover,” a sonnet in which the poet wields the image of a kestrel in flight to explore his conflicted feelings about spirituality and art. The beginning lines of the poem are filled with repetition—of words, alliteration, consonance, and assonance—all of which place a weight onto the words, slowing the pace as one reads it aloud. Try your hand at weighing down the beginning of a new poem with repetition, using a variety of rhymes and sound. After a leisure beginning, does your poem suddenly break free and open, or is it more gradual?
For nearly three decades, from the early 1980s until 2013, Dr. Jonathan Zizmor’s skincare ads for his dermatology practice were a mainstay in New York City subway cars, touting treatments for various skin problems and displaying the doctor’s own slightly smiling visage. A 2016 New York Times article noting his retirement stated: “To know Dr. Zizmor is to know the city’s secret handshake, to appreciate its quirkier, more pedestrian pleasures that natives claim as their own.” What’s hyperlocal to where you live? Brainstorm some ideas of things that might qualify as local lore, your city’s secret handshake—perhaps some idiosyncratic window displays or advertisements, a distinctive element of the urban landscape, a quirk of the natural environment, or public street art. Write an ode to one of these items, to commemorate and share its pedestrian pleasures.
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade,” wrote Italo Calvino on the first page of his 1979 novel, translated from the Italian by William Weaver. Calvino’s postmodern structure comprises twenty-two sections, with each odd-numbered passage narrated by a second-person “you” (you, the reader; you, a character). Each even-numbered passage, in turn, is the start of a new work, a fictional book that the “you” character discovers and reads, only to find that it ends abruptly and picks up in the next even-numbered passage as an entirely different work. Taking a cue from this puzzle of an approach, compose a poem that alternates between two narratives united by a winter’s night. How might a second-person “you” character be utilized in your poem? Is there an emotional progression connected to the accumulation of images and themes?
Anne Sexton’s 1962 ekphrastic poem “The Starry Night,” inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 painting of the same name, begins with a snippet from a letter written by the painter to his brother: “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” Choose a favorite work of visual art by an artist for whom you can find a bit of personal information, whether it’s something they’ve written or details about their daily life, philosophies, thematic interests, or relationships with close ones. How can you connect what you learn about the artist with the artwork itself? Write an ekphrastic poem exploring the emotions and thoughts that come to the surface when you look at the artwork, allowing yourself to incorporate a creative synthesis of their biographical details.
In the universe of the 2023 French film The Animal Kingdom (Le Règne animal), directed by Thomas Cailley, a wave of mutations have begun to transform some humans into animals. A woman who has begun mutating escapes into a forest while her husband and teenage son search for her. The unpredictable affliction causes chaos, as people adjust to seeing strangers and loved ones with fingers gradually turning into claws, fur growing on their skin, noses turning into beaks, and arms becoming feathered wings—all while fighting over conflicting perspectives of freedom and acceptance. Write a poem that explores your beliefs around these themes, perhaps pulling in fantastic metaphors or flights of fancy to assist you in your exploration.
“I changed the order of my books on the shelves. / Two days later, the war broke out. / Beware of changing the order of your books!” writes Mosab Abu Toha in his poem “Under the Rubble,” which appears in his new collection, Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024). In the poem, Abu Toha combines moments of whimsy, with distressing references to violence, death, and loss to present a portrayal of the day-to-day existence during a time of catastrophic war. Write a poem that ruminates on a difficult issue in your life that incorporates elements of playfulness or wonder in your exploration of the subject. Consider experimenting with a series of variating short stanzas as Abu Toha does in his poem, changing the tone with each section. Abu Toha speaks about his book in an interview in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The practice of cutting one’s hair can sometimes be an emotional process—the shedding of one’s layers much like the way a snake sheds its skin. For some, cutting hair might symbolize a spiritual rebirth, embracing new beginnings and letting go of the past. For others, it can be a traumatic experience. Haircuts can be well thought-out decisions, premediated and anticipated, or spur of the moment, an abrupt change to one’s appearance. Write a poem about your last haircut or the experience of observing a haircut. Include details of where you were, who was cutting the hair, the sounds of the clippers or scissors, and the emotions you experienced. Read “Haircut” by Elizabeth Alexander and “Hair” by Orlando Ricardo Menes for further inspiration.
In early September, mysterious white blobs began washing ashore on the beaches of Newfoundland in Canada, described as sticky, spongy, and doughy. Beachcombers and scientists alike were confounded—were the blobs of animal or plant origins? Were they toxic or innocuous, or created from industrial waste? As scientists continue to collect samples and run tests on these mysterious blobs, take this period of uncertainty to write a poem about a blob: these beach blobs, a blob inspired by science fiction, an explicitly frightening or comedic blob, or perhaps an experience that simply feels blob-like. How does the slipperiness of this concept lend itself to metaphors in your poem? Consider experimenting with the shape of your text, creating a concrete, yet blobby, poem.
In Rae Armantrout’s poem “Unbidden,” which appears in her collection Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), the poet’s use of short lines in conjunction with enjambment contribute to a sense of disjointedness. “The ghosts swarm. / They speak as one / person. Each / loves you. Each / has left something / undone,” writes Armantrout. This week compose a poem that revolves around a feeling of inconclusiveness. For your subject matter, consider a situation or relationship from your past that feels unfinished, one that continues to haunt you with questions. Deploy enjambment strategically—splitting up specific phrases and ending lines with significantly weighted words—to create a sense of discontinuity and unknowability.
While scientists have long known that spiders can fly across entire oceans on their silk threads by ballooning through strong wind currents, it’s only more recently that research has demonstrated their ability to travel on Earth’s electric field. Unlike humans, spiders can detect the naturally-occurring global electric field known as the ionosphere with the tiny sensory hairs on their bodies and prepare to lift off and take flight. Write a poem that focuses on modes of movement, perhaps imagining the ways in which humans have moved through space and how this has changed over time with new inventions and technology. What might be possible in the future? Try experimenting with rhythm and spacing, and explore what type of diction feels most reflective of the pacing you seek.