This year I have been following a weekly poetry writing exercise led by a Scots-based Iranian-American poet, Marjorie Lotfi. These have been half-hour session on Zoom, usually on a Wednesday morning, and they have attracted regularly 30 or 40 people.
Each session involves a word association warm-up and a close reading of a poem (usually by a living, practising poet). This is followed by a discussion of the poem’s form and the poet’s choices in constructing the poem. Finally, the meat of the exercise is a free writing exercise based on themes or ideas taken from the poem.
I have found these sessions inspirational and, through participation, have written first drafts of a couple of dozen poems.
It occurs to me that a similar exercise might work just as well for prose inspiration.
For the purposes of this exercise I’ve chosen five different poems. (Click here for links to the poems.) Instead of these, you might wish to use poems you know, that you have to hand at home perhaps. I think, though, the exercise may work more successfully with poems that are less familiar to you.
Here’s the task. Choose a poem, read it through a couple of times, looking in particular at the story the poem tells. I’ve deliberately chosen narrative poems to make it easier to find the story.
Look out for the plot twist – the point at which you stop and realise “Oh, that’s what this poem is about!” And look also for the point at which the poem steps from one state to another – from the local and particular to the general and universal (to coin a phrase). This may not be in the same place.
In Tony Harrison’s Long Distance II, for example, the plot twist comes, I think, in the third verse: He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief. Meanwhile the step from one state to another comes comes in verse four. The poet has no belief in a life after this, and yet in my new black leather phone book there’s your name / and the disconnected number I still call.
In Maggie Smith’s First Fall, I think the plot twist comes with the sentence I walk through Schiller Park with you / on my chest. While I think the step from the particular to the universal comes when she writes I’m desperate for you / to love the world because I brought you here.
What do you think about the Seamus Heaney poem? About the Carol Ann Duffy poem? Simon Armitage’s poem is different again in that it was written for an advertising campaign. I’m not sure it has a plot twist or a step between states, but it does present a personality – or multiple personalities.
Now, use a phrase or an image from your chosen poem – one you particularly like – or use the story you find in the poem, to inspire you to write your own short fiction piece. Don’t retell the poem as a story, instead use it as a jumping off point. Create a character. Incorporate a plot twist. Score extra points if you can include a step on from the particular to the universal.
Aim to write something no more than one or two pages long and try to write a full draft in half an hour or less.
Good luck!
below: Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Marjorie Lotfi
The poets and their poems
- First Fall
by Maggie Smith
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/146751/first-fall - Blackberry-Picking
by Seamus Heaney
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50981/blackberry-picking - Long Distance II
by Tony Harrison
https://poets.org/poem/long-distance-ii - A Life In The Day Of
by Simon Armitage
https://www.simonarmitage.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/A-Life-In-The-Day-Of-by-Simon-Armitage.pdf - Originally
by Carol Ann Duffy
https://www.best-poems.net/carol-ann-duffy/originally.html
Marjorie’s Table – Marjorie Lotfi’s Substack
https://marjorielotfi.substack.com
Acknowledgements
The portraits of the Heaney, Harrison and Armitage come from their Wikipedia pages. The portrait of Maggie Smith comes from her homepage. The portrait of Carol Ann Duffy comes from her biography on the website of the Poetry Foundation. The portrait of Marjorie Lotfi comes from publicity material on the website of her publisher, Bloodaxe Books.
Great prompt, John
👍 Thumbs up, Miriam! 😃