Poem prompt

Day 4: write a poem in the form of a poetry prompt. If that sounds silly, well, maybe it is! But it’s not without precedent. The poet Mathias Svalina has been writing surrealist prompt-poems for quite a while, posting them to Instagram. You can find examples here, and here, and here.


1. Walk into the whispering woods with a word snare.

2. Stand still.  Listen to the messages in the not so silence.

3. Capture the silvan sounds, the earthbrown smells, the sweet feel of soft breeze on bare arms. Look up into the canopy of emergent green.

4. Allow your mind to settle,  to forget what came before,  soak this moment into your heart.

5. Murmur what the woods have told you as you return home, lest their message disappears into the demands of the day

6. Find your writing space,  and settle once more, slow your heartbeat to match the pace of the tree breeze

7. Allow the murmur to float onto your page,  eddy between your lines,  grow into an image

8. Sit back when the flow of words has ended,  take a long breath before looking at your page

9. Examine whether the picture you see there matches the murmur in your memory

10. Tweak it until it shines. 


© Copyright 2022. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved.



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