Poetry Prompts from SpeakEasy Poetry
Respond to the SpeakEasy’s 2026 poetry prompts
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Deep Dive: Ancient and Classical Western Poetry
Myths, Legends, Epics and Translation
Dear read poetry friends,
Anthony Michael Bennett
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4d
Check out my new short story’s from the Warhammer 40k universe. I focus on a lot of things almost nobody touches on in Warhammer. If you’re into sci fi and fantasy, told from the perspective of the characters. Please go check out them out, cheers. 🤘
Deeshita♡
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6d
https://substack.com/@deeshita/note/p-212888449?r=8wr1g7
I hope you enjoy reading this
Thanks for this piece, Padraig. I’m a native Turkish speaker, and English is my second language. I studied English Language Teaching at university, so I’m fluent in English. Maybe this isn’t exactly what you were asking about, but I’ve found that when I write essays or poems, I often feel more comfortable writing in English.
Sometimes I translate my own work into Turkish as well, just to see how the feeling changes. For me, preserving the feeling while translating is an art in itself, as is the act of translation. Sometimes I feel that the Turkish and English versions carry completely different feelings, but neither is more or less than the other. They are simply unique in their own forms.
I have both Turkish and English versions of some novels, too, and I enjoy reading them in both languages and comparing the two. It never fails to amaze me how much work and artistry a translator puts into a text. Contrary to what many people think, this is something I believe AI will never truly be able to replace and it feels good to know that.
And I’d like to add one more Turkish saying: “Kolay gelsin,” which literally translates to “may it come easily.” We say it to someone who is working, writing, or even to a shopkeeper when we’re saying goodbye. So, kolay gelsin to all of you who are creating and writing.
Bless you.
I live in a two bedroom townhouse where the 2nd bedroom served for a decade as the shared bedroom of my two sons - where they landed every other week as they shuttled for most of their lives between my home & their father's. Now that they are both at university, the metal bunk bed is gone, books & trinkets have been sorted or stored in the closet, and the room has been transformed into a guest room which has a new life hosting international high school exchange students - my own rebellious form of "guerrilla diplomacy" in contentious times. This summer, I hired my younger son & his best friend to take out carpet, put in flooring, & paint the walls - completing the metamorphosis. The French call a guestroom a "chambre d'ami" ("a friend bedroom"); as I look about the room to see the bed given by my son's friend covered by the quilt given by a close friend which once covered her beloved Grammy's bed, my childhood dresser covered by the runner stitched together from French placemats by my best friend, or the olive wood praying hands carved in Bethlehem which came to us after my father's passing - even the solar dancing monkey given to my children when they were small by a colleague - the room has truly become a "chambre d'ami" - representing so many gifts of love & friendship.
Lost Words: There's a wonderful project here in Britian to retrieve the words of nature being stripped from every day use, led by the gentle prescient Robert MacFarlane. Alongside his poems a group of musicians created songs to celebrate these same small creatures, birds, nuts. As a conclusion to the set is The Lost Word Blessing. I've danced away sorrow, sat with acceptance and mourned those leaving this life including my most beloved happy beacon of a cousin, Cathy. She listened to it as life slipped away:
Even as the hour grows bleaker
Be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest
Let the larks become your chorus.
And when every hope is gone
Let the raven call you home.
Playlist for my husband's eightieth this year, not our parents' playlist. 8 of us, not normally singers. sang during drinks, during dinner, after dessert, the last around a piano.I had printed out lyrics, not having Padraig's 6 hour memory. The first chord of each song from Spotify speaker made us all grin, or dance, and jump in, young and old. Let it Be, Ain't No Sunshine When You're gone, Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay, Here Comes the Sun, Angel from Montgomery, There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm (Sam Stone) , What's going on, The Harder They Come, Three Little Birds on my window, No Woman No Cry, Fields of Gold, Nick of Time, Have I told you Lately that I love You, At last. Redemption Song, That's What Friends are For, Living on a Prayer, Love and Happiness,Lean on Me.
Decades of friendship and parenting. family trips, protests, shared again. Can't wait to hear yours!
I’m in pre-boy time, the minutes or hours before my son wakes up and the day will continue at a different speed.
I’m in AD time (After Divorce).
I’m in the Venn diagram years, when my son and his great grandmother are alive on earth at the same time, even as she forgets things almost quickly as he learns.
I’m in the Trump-stained years, which are coated in a repulsive, sickly slick oil that no one can seem to wash off.
I’m in the years of my living, the short/long time when my light switch is on and I have the great adventure of being awake, awake, awake.
What time is it? It is time
to remember that I am but a wrinkle
in the tarp of time.
For a time, an impression of my presence is made visible,
like the dent in a freshly made bed
where I once sat on the edge
to put on my shoes,
like dirt that still clings
to shoes I once wore before
I walked through the door and
was no more.
Time is what keeps everything
from happening all at once.
I am not happening all at once.
I am happening now
until I become what once happened. Time is reputedly precious.
So am I.
So are you.
For now.
-Dwight Lee Wolter
This is not exactly a myth, but it is the most comforting thing I have ever read, and it alludes to myths. I found it in the 9th grade. I was a fan of the series Beauty and the Beast, with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman. A soundtrack set poetry to music, and the last track on the "album" of sorts, was a selection from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet-- I fell in love with him then and devoured his work. I will copy the excerpt here-- I have it memorized: "How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all people, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once, beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants help from us. So you mustn’t be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises before you, larger than any you have ever seen; if a lightness, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
My marriage began on a porch, with coffee and tea, and a conversation about origins—he spoke about the origins of life on earth, I shared about creation myths, we enjoyed the impossibility and necessity of storytelling the beginning.
Perhaps my favorite creation myth is from Jewish mysticism—specifically Tzimtzum (Contraction) and Sheviret ha-Kelim—(Shattering of the Vessels):
The first act of creation is god's inhale, a darkness and a void created by tzimtzum—a word meaning "to step back to make room for an Other." How gorgeous that the beginning is breath and that we are taught from the start that we must make room for what is not us.
Then, god exhales a beam of light into the void that is meant to be carried by ten vessels who would bring perfect harmony to our world, only god's light is too powerful and the seven lower vessels shatter, exploding sparks of holy light everywhere, like seeds, like stars. There are various interpretations of this, but my favorites emphasize the humanity of the divine and the divinity of the human. The task we have in this life to gather those sparks. This means it is our task to repair the world that began in the fragmentation of a divine force that could not bear to be contained within perfection. Yum.
Poems that get-up-and-go. August's Poem of the Month winner is Sue Spiers with Recipe for a Long Life.
Live in a cold climate, take a daily plunge / in icy water, the deeper the better.
Live in a cold climate, take a daily plunge
Poems are Portals for Healing
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
I was converted to myself. It was an insight born of nothing in particular, it just ... happened. I realised my instincts were sound, were very often right and needed to be paid attention to. Now that my sound odd to some but if, as a child and then as an adult, you learned to do what others wanted, say what others wanted to hear and swallowed their opinions about you, then such a revelation is a marvel. A quiet certainty, not dogmatic and not to be forced on others, but just a deeper inner, solidity that's arrived. I welcome it and wonder how life would have been if I'd been able to recognise and honour it earlier.
Hello and happiest Sunday all! Thank you, Pádraig, and for your poem too. I'm very much looking forward to the book.
Your description of Mary in her pale blue housecoat, her benediction offered to bishop and parishioner alike, is so vivid.
This is the first prompt that has given me pause. Usually I have a very quick response. Today I find myself returning to my earliest memories, to being rehomed at eight years old, and to that first, fragile turning toward a new family, open-hearted, uncertain, and yet, somewhat miraculously, willing. Perhaps the conversion I am struggling to express is an opening to trust...
The Black Honey of Summer
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
August
After Mary Oliver
The sun does not ask permission to burn,
it simply blankets the Caribbean coast,
bleaching the coral until the white sand
feels like crushed silk beneath my bare feet.
Here, where the turquoise water meets the edge of the world,
I am not thinking of the future, or the houses to mend.
I am only watching a single vine
clinging to the shade of a sea-grape tree.
The skin of the passion fruit is wrinkling now,
not with decay, but with a patient sweetness.
I pluck it down—heavy, small, and warm—
and cut the dark rind open with my thumb.
Inside, it does not look like clean, quiet fruit;
it is a chaotic, golden galaxy of seeds,
slick and wet, holding the aroma of the rain.
Mary Oliver told us that to love the world
is to swallow it whole, to let the juice
run down the chin without shame.
So I eat, letting the sharp, electric tartness
waken my mouth, while the salt wind
carries the rhythm of the high tide.
ByEni
Written after Mary Oliver’s poem, August.
Peaches 🍑
I once heard it said, if summer were to be days of the week, July would be Saturday and August would be Sunday. And yet the peach, so juicy and sweet and soft to the touch feels in my hand and my mouth like the promise of a lazy Saturday fruit.
And when you eat it, it says wait now, don’t turn from the slow sweet relaxation of Saturday to the grocery shopping food prep, laundry doing days of Sunday just stay, stay here a while and enjoy this Saturday fruit.
Because no matter how sweet those juicy Peaches of August are nobody wants it to be Sunday just yet.
The Light That Shines Out of a Life
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
Ash, thank you for choosing Mary Oliver's heart-wrenching Singapore for this week's prompt and for your lovely response. And for including the link about the hibiscus flower in Sudanese culture. So beautiful and bitter-sweet.
Beautiful work. These poems complement each other well. I love following this journey you are on.
Gaslight Cafe
Poetry by Trisha Leigh Shufelt
Spur of the moment poem, not inspired by the famous Gaslight Cafe of Greenwich Village. This one came to me in a dream last night.
A Voice From I Don’t Know Where
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
Mother debbi rhodes
A Voice From I Don’t Know Where, after Mary Oliver
Can you feel me hungering for you?
Sometimes…
Sometimes when You’re looking at me,
I feel an overwhelming sense of belovedness,
knowing that You want me.
That is always true, whether you feel it or not.
Yes, but sometimes I’m too angry
or frustrated or tired, and at those times
my brain can shut You out.
Those are the times I thirst for you most,
and I weep at your withdrawal.
I am
the ground on which you can stand
when you feel untethered.
I am
the light that can penetrate
your heartache if you let me in.
I am
The bread that will fill your
hungry soul
Hearing Your voice,
somehow…
I think I can trust,
with trembling faith,
that you will continue to
look at me and love me,
even when I look away.
I will never stop hungering for you,
never stop thirsting for you,
never stop looking at you,
never stop speaking to you.
Thank you. I think I’ll take a nap now.
Written after Mary Oliver, A voice from I don’t know Where.
Live! The voice says, deep down, from I don’t know where.
Is this not a life I say? I look around and I see all the telltale signs of a life. There is a home, children, cats and a dog, love, laughter and tears, signs of life everywhere.
Yes, but where is the living? that voice again. It is here I say. It is here in the smallness of the doings. It is here all around I say. One only has to really look to see the blessings of it.
So then your heart is happy in the smallness of the life you live? Yes, I say, though I do wish, at times, to live a little bigger.
And then, there it is again, live the voice says, deep down from I don’t know where.
Is this not a life I say? and so, on it goes
Thank you, Finn
60 Years of Poetry in Pittsburgh
Celebrating the 60th birthday of the International Poetry Forum
This coming October marks the 60th anniversary of the International Poetry Forum, an independent literary organization that has hosted poetry readings and educational programs by legends like W.H. Auden, Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Princess Grace of Monaco, Queen Noor of Jordan, James Earl Jones, Gregory Peck, and
Lose It
Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16
Toss the ballast, the balloon floats windswept Lose the anchor, the ship slips adrift A cork under the waterfall is lifted Even the best knot is sometimes slipped. The greatest love affairs can fall apart loved ones are lost, relationships shift. A child starts to leave home at birth slowly sundering her mother’s heart. Parents lost is the final ungro…
Great poetry! At this time of my life. I realize I do no know the time and day of when God will call me to eternal life and know I cannot control the problems of aging, etc. I then remember to let go, let God.
My journey supporting my daughter through her devastating divorce has brought this home.
For her, letting go of the love of her life, the promises made, dreams shared, their home, security, safety , family, ….
Letting go is hard to do but in the end frees us to hope anew.
Thanks Frank
Carol
Very interesting take on the idea of maturing from "poem for me" to "poem for reader".
One of the best pieces of advice which unlocked aomething in my own poetry writing was from a teacher who suggested to wake up every morning, and still in that groggy, half-asleep state, write a poem about whatever comes to mind. Write it badly, write it with gaps, but get the thoughts, images, and ideas on paper.
Often going back to those raw, rough drafts revealed more introspection and creativity than poems that I wrote and worked on more consciously and deliberately at other times.
“Sensory Performance” with Katie Lohner (Naarm) | 13.09 | SpeakEasy Poetry Workshop
Announcing our next workshop, “Sensory Performance”, featuring interstate facilitator Katie Lohner (Naarm). Join us from 2pm-3:30pm on September 13th to delight in the senses & invite the imagination.
Hello, and welcome to the next SpeakEasy Poetry community update!
How exciting, this will be delightful! Yay 🎉 and thanks for the beautiful expression of this workshop journey! It brings me so much joy to see poetry harness real connection 😊
Erotic Self-Sovereignty
5 short poems on surrendering to desire without surrendering the self
Nobody Is Coming to Discover You
You need to leave the house.
I get it. Going to a poetry event for the first time can be daunting. It somehow makes you feel like you’re in grade school again. You text a friend, Can you come with me to this poetry thing? Not because you necessarily need them there, but because you just need somebody there.
Poetry Prompt of the Week: Repetition as Perseveration
In this generative prompt, show us a mind in motion by repeating or extending comparisons to the same thing, as in Yusef Komunyakaa’s “‘You and I Are Disappearing’”
I once had a poetry professor who hated multiple figurations for the same thing. If a poem compared, say, a lover’s hair to silk thread and then again to windblown grass, they’d tell you to pick one image and let it stand on its own. Multiple figurat…
I think it’s also worth noting that the biblical burning bush “was blazing, yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2b), much as the girl in the poem continues to burn throughout the day in the poet’s continued vision of her. Amazing poem.
"You and I mourn the dove"
White plumage squats
in my teeth.
Like I have bitten
the raw edge of a mushroom.
Like streamers are billowing
from my eyes and nose.
Like small snowflakes orbit my irises—currencies, reservoirs,
memory walnuts.
Like the cellophane wrapper that squeezes the lightning in its eye.
Like a daydream that bears white sharks.
Like the slippery eel,
like the wispy robe that was the body's boundaries?
Like the curtain that keeps flowing into my face.
Like the white that is almost translucent?—The planets in an onion.
Who is the dove?
What is the dove?
Is is a living thing?
Did I swallow it or did it engulf me?
Has death snuck into me?—
Its white tongue full of spores.
Shall I look into the mirror?
Am I the dove?
A rough draft...
Making Art in the Dark: Thoughts on Dolly and the Mystery of Death
A night painting from France and poem about loss
Constellation
Thanks for sharing - I was also struck by how sad I felt to learn of Dolly Parton's passing. You put it beautifully. And the streetlight in Toulouse matched with this article so well. Thank you. (PS I don't know that song. She's had so many, and we all have different ones which hold meaning for us. Going to queue it on the playlist)
Orgasms. Cravings. Sensations that come out of nowhere. Deep sexual dreams. Your body breaks like a little cracker, in remembrance of blood.
Omgggg! This is heavenly😉
The religious theme throughout was done SO well. My favorite line as you opened the poem drew me in:
“Where beneath the arched vault of my own heavy ribs I honor you.”
Girl!!!👏🏼👏🏼👌🏼perfection!
Classroom Series: How to Slam
Emotion, Performance, and Audience in Your Poetry
Dear read poetry friends,
Thanks so much for this really clear, well-written, overview of the history of slam poetry! It’s a form I have thought about quite a bit, love its history, believe in its mission, and in fact my thesis advisor in grad school, while I’m not sure was a “slam” poet, was part of the Punk poetry scene Chicago in the 80s. However, your post was also thought-provoking, and made struggle again with it, because even though it should be right up my alley, I actually do not like slam poetry very much as a form, while at the same time fully support people’s enthusiasms for it. Let me explain a bit:
In one sense, slam should be right up my alley artistically, and should excite me, because Iit brings together the two art forms I have pursued in grad school and beyond: acting and poetry. While in the writing program, I became highly influenced by the beats, and especially Charles Olson and the Black Mountain poets, because of the primary structural device for poetry was the poetic line as BREATH, and the primacy of SOUND in the meaning in the poem. YES. Poetry is meant to be embodied, and its meaning is not language-as-logic, but language distilled: language as music, sound carrier of meaning, spoken to be experienced, known through experience, not rational. This, in fact, made up my theme in my critical thesis: poetry as sound, poetry as spoken.
Which is what Slam's all about, right? Well, maybe it was different in the 80s, but to be honest, the slam poetry I’ve seen, what I felt was all self-performance, and not very good poetry. I want to be careful, here, however. I am a white male. Slam has been a very important movement for Black and Hispanic writers to celebrate, declare, and fully acknowledge their worth and humanity. You mentioned the Negritude movement, which was awesome. I LOVE the Negritude poets. Sadly, though, the actual poetry I’ve heard in slam felt a bit forced, a bit predictable and at times tedious with the rhymes, and then I just felt that though the celebration and self-empowerment of identity is a crucial, and needed, experience for many minorities to embrace, and reclaim, I still felt the theme of every slam performance I have seen was pretty much the same, and thus, got repetitive, and lost some of its meaning, power, and impact.
I’m sure there are excellent slam poets out there, and I almost feel like as a white poet, my criticism may feel illegitimate, but yes, performance is good, and yes, poetry needs to live off the page, and yes, identity should be celebrated, but ultimately, the originality of the words, and the structure, still matter, and if rhymed, the rhymes need to be a surprise, and not predictable. Finally, I feel that self-empowerment and self-proclamation can be effective but if that’s always the PRIMARY meaning of the slam, the art of the poetry and nuance of performance can often become secondary, may feel a bit amateurish, and perhaps not worked on as artfully as they could, if the goal isn’t art, but rather self-empowerment.
I hope that made sense and wasn’t offensive. I DO support the form, but I feel if a true art form, it needs to be treated as art. If it’s a fun thing to try, it’s or a fun thing to watch, but that serves a different purpose. But in thinking about it artistically, maybe budding slam poets should go back to the Negritude poets a bit more, or find different ways, definitions, and expands one's idea of expression, and also what authentic identity is for each individual: what it is, explore its complexities, and find their own unique way of expressing it. And finally, even though it’s a performance, the words, structure, music, and language, should never be secondary, or an afterthought, or, as I've experience, forced to fit the form. Instead, the form and words must both be essential, unified, and of equal importance. I personally suggest exploring NOT rhyming, but that is not a criticism but more an individual preference.
Regardless, I support any striving poet and the continual search in making it new. And as to the life of a poem, YES! Get it off the page! Keep embodying it, and when speaking it, my last thought is that the performance should be an organic outgrowth of the music of the words. You don’t have to perform the words. Allow the words to imbue the performance!
I’m on live right now, I just subscribe to you, maybe you can drop by at my account, and let’s talk on things, you could ask questions, so that we can have a healthy conversation. https://substack.com/@josiahothnielpulas/note/p-211852581?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=8opzyw
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