Animate: Satin & Velvet Poetry Prompt

Animate is a poetry prompt that focuses on speaking as if we are a particular object. This time, we’re speaking as silky smooth satin or velvet.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Speak in the first person.

2. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives.

3. Consider where you—satin or velvet—are located, or where you came from, or where you are going. Or, speak as if you have a special desire or concern: maybe you are hungry, missing something, afraid of a sight or sound, in love with another piece of cloth that is like you or not like you. Be creative. Any type of situation is fair game.

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

That’s it! We look forward to hearing you speak poetically, from the viewpoint of beautiful cloth— satin or velvet.

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Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a recent poem from Shannon we enjoyed:

#PersephoneToo

Sun climbs over earth-curve
A threshold, a hand holds
A basket
Her task it’s just to frolic
And flower-pick

Bare feet
Feeling moist soil
Seeming solid
Though plenty-pierced,
Pieced and pungent
Clustered crocus,
Narcissus
A tapestry splash of texture-breath
Spring makes its break from death
But life
Means change

Sky blends
and streaks from crimson deep
to orange and white spikes
Like Heaven’s grass blades
A slice of silence
Softly in tree-shades
Cheeks warmed by sun’s rays
A bark-backed tree seat
Her place for peace
And she’s a willow
The earth her pillow
The bird-song
Sweet

Then,
A rip
In the fabric
Of bedrock
A terror shock
Earth opens
She tunnels down
The underground
The thunder-sound
Envelops her
And Hell is now
Her home

She struggles to see
To feel on hands and knees
For the pieces
The splintered basket
The shreds and shards
In the dark, the scars
The grief
Thick as stone

And her eyes strain
Releasing rain-drops
Unceasing pain–
Drops to her knees
And she cries
Until her eyes have
Offered all they have

Now breathing deep
A healing sleep
Adrape in
A cape of
Exhaustion

Light enters gently
In the new-quiet
Fist, still held too tight
She looks down
Stretching finger-curls
In her palm
Unfurls
Soft and yellow-white
Though the stem is cracked
Petals still intact
The damp narcissus

Misshapen, crepey
And translucent
Rich-earthy new scent
This beauty different
Both lonely
And holy
And only
Known
To those
Whose bones have soaked
In darkness

—by Shannon Mayhew

Photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg, Creative Commons via Flickr. 

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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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—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland

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