Workshop Inspiration
- Use fortune cookies: Have students randomly select from a bucket of fortune cookies. They could use the fortune cookie as the start to their poem, the theme, or anywhere within their poem.
- Pass it on: Have students write one line and then pass the poem to the right for another student to write a line, etc. They have to think quickly and on their feet. Give them a minute or two and then tell them to rotate. (Renga)
- Folding poem: similar to the pass-it-on poem, except each student that writes a line folds the paper so that only the last line can be seen. (Also: Modified Equisite Corpse)
- Imitation 1: Have students imitate the style of a specific poem/author.
- Imitation 2: Have students choose imagery/phrases from an author's writing and write on the board. Tell them to use at least up to 5 of the images/wording of this author in their poem.
- Magnetic poetry: Use magnetic poetry (english and other languages) to make pieces together or individually.
- Language: Challenge students to think about their use of language - and to use nonsense words or words in other languages in their poem.
- Blackout/Erasure poetry: Gather newspaper clippings, printed pages of books, or magazine clippings and have students create poems by blacking out unneeded language and drawing out a poem.
- Have students write a poem and then read it backwards to find new meaning.
- Have students write a poem using only lines of previously published poetry (Cento).
- Have students "translate" or mistranslate (paying attention to the tone/sound) a poem you read to them in a language they don't know (could also try Homophonic translation - translate the sounds into English words).
- Have each student write a line of poetry, then put it in a hat, and pick out each new line as the inspiration for a poem.
- Homolinguistic translation: Take a published poem and have your students translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. They could also translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction (for example, into a slang or vernacular). Students could also try this as a group, sending the poem on for "translation" from person to another until you get back to the first author.
- Collaborative Surrealist Poetry: Groups write down questions on one side of the paper and answers on another. Then the poetry begins - they go around and the first group asks a question, the next answers, etc etc.
- Free writing - unedited: Have your students try to transcribe as accurately as possible their thoughts in writing without editing anything out, as quickly as possible trying not to plan what they are writing.
- Write a poem consisting entirely of overheard conversations.
- Opposites: Take phrases or sentences in a poem and substitute opposite or different nouns and verbs, perhaps so that it says something surprising.
- Write about a dream you wish you'd had as if it were real.