18 Poetry Writing Prompts Prompts

Write a poem composed of instructions for doing something impossible.

Use only questions for the first half of a poem and no questions in the second half.

Write about a family member through the objects they routinely touched.

Create a poem that moves from the smallest visible detail to the largest scale you can imagine.

Write a ten-line poem in which no line contains the verb “to be.”

Use a recurring color that means something different in each stanza.

Write a persona poem spoken by an object waiting to be discarded.

Build a poem from overheard fragments without explaining where they came from.

Write about heat using only images associated with cold objects.

Create a poem whose line lengths gradually shrink as the speaker becomes more certain.

Write a poem around one word you refuse to include.

Describe a city through verbs only in the first draft, then add nouns selectively.

Use the same opening phrase in four stanzas but change who “you” refers to each time.

Write about an apology using no direct speech.

Create a poem in which each stanza corrects one detail from the previous stanza.

Write a praise poem for an object usually ignored.

Use one technical term from a field you know and make its literal meaning emotionally important.

Write a poem that ends on an image introduced in the first line but understood differently.