Today’s prompt may be something you did during your school days, or perhaps something you’ve never attempted. I once wrote a poem shaped like a tree that won me my first trophy, for winning first place in a poetry contest. More recently, I wrote an inverted pyramid poem about recovering from an injury to my trapezius muscle.
- Write a concrete poem, meaning a poem where the visual placement of the words is as important as the words themselves. For some examples, visit the Poetry Knows No Bounds page at Poetry Through the Ages. You may also be inspired by Ho Cheung Lee’s poem, “Follow the Flow,” which appeared recently in Wild Violet. Instead of a concrete poem that focuses on visual placement, the visually impaired might write a poem the focuses on the sounds of words and that may incorporate onomatopoeic words or nonsense words in order to sound like the subject being described.
If you like, share a link to your poem in the comments below. You may also copy and paste the entire poem into a comment, but remember that poems shared that way are not considered published in Wild Violet.
About Alyce Wilson
Alyce Wilson is the editor of Wild Violet and in her copious spare time writes humor, non-fiction, fiction and poetry and infrequently keeps an online journal. Her first chapbook, Picturebook of the Martyrs; her e-book/pamphlet, Stay Out of the Bin! An Editor's Tips on Getting Published in Lit Mags ; her book of essays and columns, The Art of Life; her humorous nonfiction ebook, Dedicated Idiocy: How Monty Python Fandom Changed My Life, and her newest poetry collection, Owning the Ghosts, can all be ordered from her Web site, AlyceWilson.com. In late 2019, she published a volume of poetry by her third great-grandfather, Reading's Physician Poet: Poems by Dr. James Meredith Mathews, which also contains genealogical information about the Mathews family. She lives with her husband and son in the Philadelphia area and takes far too many photos of her handsome, creative son, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda.
