Rajasthan, India by Nick Kenrick (https://www.flickr.com/photos/zedzap/)
For Day 10 of the NaPoWriMo challenge, in our progress through the alphabet, we’ve reached “I” for “Imaginary.” I’m going to borrow an exercise used by one of my poetry professors in grad school. He asked us to write two paragraphs: one a description of a place we knew very well, and one a description of a place we’d never been. Then we were asked to examine those two paragraphs and see which one was more evocative. Almost without exception, the one about the place we’d just imagined was more interesting, because for the places we knew too well, we added too many unnecessary details.
So for today, write a poem the involves the imagination: in terms of setting, character, or action. If you like, contrast that with details from a place/time/event/person that you know extremely well. You might benefit from doing some free writing beforehand, pulling out the best phrases and incorporating them into the finished work.
Feel free to share your poem (or a link to your poem) in the comments.
About Alyce Wilson
