Poet Laureate Poem Prompts

A poet prompt may take you in many directions, depending upon what draws your eye or hooks you--is it a line or phrase, a story, a particular form, a feeling? Everyone will have a response unique to his/her own life experiences and attention to craft. Be yourself!

After the poet laureate bio and poem prompts on these pages, you will sometimes find the editor's response. You can see how her mind works around and into a mentor poem and what she has taken away from the experience to bring to her own work.

Seven Seas–Kathleen Flenniken

The one we’ve fished to death,
that tosses ships till they sink,
so deep the fish at the fissures
squiggle instead of swim, glow
instead of gaze.

The one inside a conch shell
that sweeps us from the couch
to its shore—our first metaphor.

The sea of ones and zeros
with tributaries pressing Send,
where our secrets glitter
in the data gyre.

The sea of refugees, turned away, turned away, turned away,
crashing the razor-wire fence.

The sea of cash, thick
with trawlers’ tangling nets, green
with the drowned and drowning.

The sea of regret
that surges and retreats
and sucks at our feet,
a tide that takes us nowhere.

And the final sea of liquid light
we’ll only know from below.

from Post Romantic (University of Washington Press, 2020)

A Cast of Strangers–Rachel Barton

A stranger walks beside you
casting seeds into the wind
See how they fly helter-skelter like
a sheet of starlings or the swirling
chaff of years past like so many minnows
schooling or dispersing

Maybe a stranger casts you off from shore–
a slipped stitch in a sea of pearls–
the dinghy small in a great slough
the craft’s chine inclined to narrow
and you a bit wobbly
until you settle on the bare board
of a bench and begin to row

It won’t be a stranger casts you out
–ne’er-do-well pub crawler
or even worse some demon spawn–
but your own kin sick of your stink
–bad habits like fish gone off–
and no remedy for it but absence

‘til a stranger comes again to lift you up
from the cold cobbles of despair and self-loathing
Casting about for a purchase you seize
on her robe and all becomes light
You see the crystalline web
that binds us–animal vegetable mineral—

and at that moment a silver cast to your hair
your bones home at last in weathered skin
a constellation of moles and liver spots
a small company of barnacles
(which do not seem strange to you at all)
O frabjous day–the journey begins

Wow! This was a difficult challenge–to use a word/concept in a variety of contexts. This is my draft, so far, which may evolve as the month proceeds.

About Poet Laureate Diane Raptosh

Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American
Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was long-listed for
the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of
three fellowships in literature from the Idaho
Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise
Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho
Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she
won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in
Excellence. A highly active ambassador for
poetry, she has given poetry workshops
everywhere from riverbanks to maximum
security prisons. She teaches literature
and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal
Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her most recent
book of poems, Human Directional, was published by Etruscan
Press in 2016. Her sixth book of poems, Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles
was just published by Etruscan Press in early summer 2020. Her
seventh book, Run: A Verse History of Victoria Woodhull, will be
published in the form of a triptych by Etruscan Press in spring 2021.
For More information go to her website.

Dear Zygote in Your Limniad State–Diane Raptosh

Dear Zygote,

You should enjoy your limniad state,
nymph-like and windless, there on two sides

of a threshold. Howsoever, the WordHippo
wonders if I mean to speak lemonade.

This saké is murky, and it makes me wish
I could tottle off to that original somewhere

in whom even the wines sip words
and live alphabets draw on that spliff

of night air. Life Speck, here is
the ordinal pregnancy:

Without each other, we hole up
within each other. Remember, too,

I have been busy, turning
the soil in the few people’s hearts

I plan to rename the grave
when my day comes: Am hoping to sow

the silt-line conditions for a happy death—
choired by Husband Consciousness—

that wry spirit-vegetable. That solid air
loyalty. Netflix, elsewhere,

boots into verb, while power lopes in
to daily unheaven everyone. Still,

for the most part, Ms. Zygote Missive,
you are the test of the great human maybe,

there in that mother-hip meadow—
that namelessly face-free state

of between. Dear nymph-dividual:
Let me not spew lemonade,

as I’ve gotten wind of your balls-out greed
for the good of all species.

This poem was just published in Raptosh’s full-length collection, Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles (Etruscan Press 2020).

One Last Letter–Rachel Barton

Diane Raptosh’s poem immediately brought this piece to mind–if she can talk to her unborn grandchild, then I can share talking to my dead mother– though I am determined to dive into more epistolary poems after reading hers.

I read a book last month that dropped me down into a waterless lake where gasses ignited like fox fire and illuminated the glass of ice overhead, stars glinting through like fireworks, and the birds, trapped down there, rushing up to the translucent surface and stunning themselves silly. I wanted to go there with you. I wanted to call you and talk about what I had read–the wonders of Rick Bass, the wilderness of our lives.

Instead, I talked to my sisters who have been reading the same stories and we each tugged quietly on our own memories of living in the woods, the holler, or the bush, which contributed to our appreciation of this author’s sensibilities, his propensity for keeping his stories close to the wild.

I can see you now with your stacks of books beside your chair, an open book on your lap, chin in hand, your head just slightly bowed to catch the phrases spread across the page. Remember when Colette and Anais Nin swept through the house like a tidal wave? You missed Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, Mom, and Brian Doyle’s Mink River. And the poetry—don’t get me started on the poetry! Which has come a long way since your Dylan Thomas. . . .

I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you, Mom, and that if you ever decide to come back, to continue reading, for instance, then know that I’m in—I will read with you, from whatever distance; we all have cell phones now, you know–well, all except Mary Agnes—and we can pick them up any time, day or night, and read our favorite lines to one another.

Goodnight, Mom. Don’t forget to turn off NPR before you climb under the covers or I’ll think that talk show host, mumbling though the walls, is you, talking in your sleep.

This poem was previously published in the Oregon English Journal, Winter 2018.

About Poet Laureate Kim Stafford

Image may contain: 1 person Kim Stafford was born and grew up in Oregon. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, and editor of half a dozen others. He holds a PhD in medieval literature from the University of Oregon. Stafford has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Governor’s Arts Award, and the Stewart Holbrook Award from Literary Arts for his contributions to Oregon’s literary culture. His work has been featured on NPR.

Stafford has worked as a printer, photographer, oral historian, editor and visiting writer at a host of colleges and schools, and has also offered writing workshops in Italy, Scotland and Bhutan. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.

Stafford’s most recent book, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do, is an account of his brother’s suicide, and the struggle of his family to live beyond. It is a book where “the story reaches back through the difficult end to grasp the beautiful beginning, like pulling a venomous serpent inside out.”

“Poetry is our native language,” says Stafford. “We begin with imaginative experiments as children, . . . lyric language can be a realm of discovery and delight throughout life. For adults and communities, poetry can help us be more open to new ideas, emotionally informed, and buoyant in responding to challenges. . . ”

This is an edited version of Kim Stafford’s biography from the Oregon Cultural Trust.