Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Form It: Things Invisible Poetry Prompt

By Heather Eure 11 Comments

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

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 Things Invisible.

poetry prompt mini series offer

Click to get FREE 5-Prompt Mini-Series

Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem from Maureen that stirred hearts and minds:

Invisible Scars

They’ve come back from war
but the fighting is not over.

They visit it in dreams, their
mind’s eye replaying it all:

how the speeding car pulls
up, brakes burning, driver’s

cell phone in hand, pressing
the single digit that renders

the morning’s market buys
un-totaled, the black abayas

a flutter of shredded threads.

Later they will have tattooed
prosthetics, tell their pretty

blonde nurses where to look
for lost and longed-for pieces.

—by Maureen Doallas

Photo by Neil Fowler. Creative Commons via Flickr.

Browse more writing prompts
Browse poetry teaching resources

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.

“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland

Buy How to Write a Poem Now!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
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)
  • Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
  • Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
  • Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018

Filed Under: Blog, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, Things Invisible, writer's group resources, writing prompt

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Maureen says

    March 13, 2017 at 10:51 am

    Thank you for featuring ‘Invisible Threads’, Heather. I also thank everyone for the comments received last week.

    Reply
    • Heather Eure says

      March 14, 2017 at 6:33 pm

      You are quite welcome, Maureen. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Bethany R. says

    March 13, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    I like the breakdown of how different forms lend themselves to certain avenues of expression.

    Maureen, Invisible Scars is powerful. Those first two lines pinpoint the lasting affect of deep wounds:

    “They’ve come back from war
    but the fighting is not over.”

    Reply
    • Maureen says

      March 14, 2017 at 11:45 am

      Thank you, Bethany.

      Reply
  3. Sandra Heska King says

    March 13, 2017 at 4:31 pm

    Maureen–yes, this is a powerful poem. The lines Bethany shared above are powerful. So is “the black abayas / a flutter of shredded threads.”

    Reply
    • Maureen says

      March 14, 2017 at 11:45 am

      Thank you, Sandra.

      Reply
  4. Monica Sharman says

    March 17, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    Invisible from the shore of the lake
    Under the ripples, always awake
    A twist, a whirl, a vortex churning
    Below the surface, fire burning
    Rumbling, almost too much to take

    The water is still, the surface opaque
    Yet veiled beneath, submerged, the ache
    Remains—a stirring, turbulent yearning
    Invisible from the shore

    At this depth, something has to break
    Opposing currents clash and make
    A maelstrom moving, overturning
    Never stagnant, always learning—
    A push, a weight I cannot shake
    Invisible from the shore

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      March 17, 2017 at 12:32 pm

      Love the motion and energy in your poem, Monica. I can feel it.

      Reply
      • Monica Sharman says

        March 17, 2017 at 2:39 pm

        Thank you, Bethany.

        Reply
    • Monica Sharman says

      March 17, 2017 at 2:41 pm

      Huh. I thought I put the word “pressure” in here, but it’s nowhere to be found. Maybe somewhere in the process, it became “push.”

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Things Invisible Poetry Prompt: Our Ghosts - says:
    March 27, 2017 at 8:01 am

    […] to everyone who participated in our recent poetry prompt. Here is a poem from Monica we […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy