Trowbridge Stanza - Bring & Share Poetic Prompts

The Trowbridge Stanza event on Saturday 4 April will be a “bring and share” workshop, in which each participant brings (well technically, emails in advance!) a poetic prompt.

If you'll be joining us, find a poem that inspires you - an “I wish I’d written that” poem. The poem should not be overly long - stick to something that will fit on a side of A4. Based on your poem, write a prompt to inspire other members of the group. When writing a prompt, remember to give people lots of pointers and ideas.

So for example, here’s a link to Dylan Thomas’ magnificent ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’. Here’s an example of how you might structure a good prompt based on this poem:

• Introduction: In this poem, Dylan Thomas looks at nature as something which creates beauty and life and then destroys it.
• Set the theme or style for the poem: Think about something, personal, or in the wider world, which is has both positive and negative sides, and write a poem about which considers the two sides.
• Give some inspiration: It could be a person with a difficult personality, a place you both love and hate, a memory which is bittersweet.
• Extend the prompt and give an extra challenge! Notice how Dylan Thomas uses a repetitive form in his stanzas to cycle from positive to negative within each stanza. Try to emulate this within your poem.

Once you have a prompt and a poem (please supply the text of the poem or an image of it), by email to Nina. The deadline for this is Wednesday 1 April (preferably before).
Depending on how many attend this session, we will probably not be able to use all the prompts (we’ll probably fit in 6 at most, or our brains will explode!), but Nina will circulate them all to all attendees to work on in their own time.

All are welcome to this participative workshop. Please note that the Trowbridge Stanza abides by The Poetry Society code of conduct

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