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Form It: Horizons Poetry Prompt

By Heather Eure 10 Comments

form-it-horizons-promptForm It is a prompt that focuses on exploring our topic through form poetry. This time, we’re going to “form” horizons.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Consider how you are feeling today, as you approach your topic. Are you sorrowful? Overflowing with joy or good humor? Maybe you’re in a snarky frame of mind. Or feeling perplexed. Perhaps you’re just in the mood to tell a story or express gratitude or awe. You could also consider the nature of the topic itself. Think on these things before you…

2. Choose a form that either matches or purposely works against how you feel as you approach your topic, or that matches or purposely works against the nature of the topic itself. Options:

Acrostic (good for creating puzzles and mystery or dedications)

Ballad (excellent way to tell a story)

Catalog Poem (useful for building intensity, praise, or a sense of magic)

Ghazal (helpful for emphasizing “longing” or for exploring metaphysical questions)

Haiku (good for creating immediacy or focusing in on emotion)

Ode (excellent way to praise something or someone you love or admire)

Pantoum (useful for plumbing depressive or anxious themes)

Rondeau (helpful for giving form to extremes of either sadness or dark wit)

Sestina (good for exploring confusion, questions, worries, neuroses, fears in an oblique way)

Sonnet (excellent way to confine a bombastic theme or reign in a potentially sappy or overly-sentimental theme; also an excellent way to “work against” a topic humorously)

Villanelle (useful for themes that feel resistant to answers; also can be used to “work against” a topic, using mocking humor)

3. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives.

4. Consider doing a little research about the topic you are covering: its history, associated words, music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details, so you can speak convincingly and intriguingly.

That’s it! We look forward to hearing you form poetically, about Horizons.

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Featured Poem

Thanks to all who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Sandra we enjoyed:

I stand where sand smooths its skirts
and slips into the wave’s embrace.
Together they tumble toward the sunset
(or is it the sunrise?)
where sea kisses sky.
What’s beyond my eye-mark?
Is there a space for me in this
ripple of time to build a castle?

—by Sandra Heska King

Photo by David McGregor. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

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  • About
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Heather Eure

Heather Eure

Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.
Heather Eure

Latest posts by Heather Eure (see all)

  • Form It: Little Lamb Poetry Prompt - March 26, 2018
  • Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
  • Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018

Filed Under: Blog, Form It, Horizon poetry, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, writer's group resources, writing prompt

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Comments

  1. Sandra Heska King says

    January 23, 2017 at 10:06 am

    Oh! I didn’t expect to find my poem featured here. Thanks so much!

    Reply
    • Donna Falcone says

      January 23, 2017 at 10:16 am

      Sandra – this poem is beautiful. The sand smooths its skirts… the sea kisses the sky …. oh beautiful! 🙂

      Reply
  2. HisFireFly says

    January 24, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    Okay, I couldn’t resist the challenge and wrote two!
    http://hisfirefly.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-friends-at-tweetspeak-poetry-put.html

    Reply
    • Heather Eure says

      January 24, 2017 at 9:45 pm

      I enjoyed these. The double acrostic was a bonus! Thanks for sharing.

      Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      January 27, 2017 at 10:19 am

      Fantastic, Karin! 😀

      Reply
  3. Monica Sharman says

    January 25, 2017 at 1:44 pm

    Ghazal on the Horizon

    Global traveler, make the horizon
    your aim, though mountains break the horizon.

    Whether in eighty days or hours, see through it;
    don’t make it opaque, the horizon.

    Like Passepartout, keep your own time
    whenever you overtake the horizon.

    Like Aouda, remember the past,
    the present, the future ache her eye’s on.

    And I, like Phileas, walk with a posture
    and attitude that can remake the horizon.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Poetry: Various Forms | ELA in the middle says:
    January 28, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    […] Source: https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2017/01/23/form-poetry-horizons-prompt/ […]

    Reply
  2. Horizon Line: Poetry Prompt - says:
    January 30, 2017 at 8:01 am

    […] to everyone who participated in last week’s form-themed poetry prompt. Here is a recent poem from Rick we […]

    Reply
  3. Form It: Things Invisible Poetry Prompt - says:
    March 13, 2017 at 9:16 am

    […] Form It: Horizons Poetry Prompt […]

    Reply
  4. Form It: A Mountain Poetry Prompt - says:
    July 24, 2017 at 8:01 am

    […] Form It: Horizons Poetry Prompt […]

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