Poetry Prompt Generator

Press Generate and you get one poetry prompt, a single sentence such as "Compose a poem using only questions" or "Write a poem from the perspective of a shadow." There are 55 prompts in the set, there are no filters, and each press picks one at random, so the same prompt can come back. It is meant for the moment you have time to write and no idea what to write about.

What kind of prompts are in the set

The 55 prompts were written for this page rather than scraped, and they fall into four rough groups. The count matters because a small, deliberate set behaves differently from a dump of thousands: you will cycle through it over a few weeks of daily writing, which is about the right pace to work through every type of exercise.

• Formal constraints. Rules that shape the poem before you pick a subject: every line begins with the same letter, use only words that start with "s" to describe a storm, write a poem that reads the same forwards and backwards, tell a story without any proper nouns, use at least three languages.
• Perspective shifts. Speak as something that doesn't normally speak: a tree recounting its seasons, a photograph in an old album, a shadow, a nocturnal animal watching a city, the moon in conversation with the ocean, an apology from one inanimate object to another.
• Named themes. Straightforward subjects to build on: solitude in a crowded city, the art of forgetting, hope in a dystopian setting, crossing borders, the last tree in a cleared forest, rediscovering a forgotten hobby.
• Sensory exercises. Describe the color blue without using the word, the sound of rain on different surfaces, tasting something for the first time, listening to a language you don't understand, a seasonal change through all five senses.

How to get a poem out of a one-line prompt

A prompt like "the lifecycle of a star" is a subject, not a poem. Decide two things before writing: the form (free verse, a sonnet, couplets, a prose block) and the distance (are you the star, watching the star, or remembering someone who pointed it out). Set a timer for ten or fifteen minutes and write without stopping. If the prompt is a constraint, obey it strictly on the first draft and only loosen it when revising; the constraint is what forces unexpected word choices. If the prompt is a perspective, the first line should establish who is speaking without announcing it. Prompts about nostalgia, forgetting and solitude come up several times in the set, so if you land on one of those twice, try the opposite form the second time: a short, clipped poem if the first was long, or a formal one if the first was free verse.

Where people use it

• Daily writing practice. One press, one poem, before checking your phone. Fifty-five prompts covers about two months of weekdays.
• Classroom warm-ups. Put the prompt on the board and give the class eight minutes. The constraint prompts work best because every student's poem comes out different.
• Writing groups. Everyone writes to the same prompt and reads aloud; the perspective prompts make for the most surprising range.
• Getting unstuck mid-project. Press until you find a prompt that could sit inside the manuscript you're already working on.

If you want a finished poem rather than a starting point, the AI Poem Generator writes one from a topic you type in, and the Love Poem Generator does the same for romantic verse. For a fixed comic form, use the Limerick Generator. Readers who would rather start from a text than a prompt can pick a passage with the Random Bible Verse Generator, or see all books, quotes & poetry tools.