Despite having a lot of time to be creative during this pandemic situation, it can be really difficult to get started on something. With a prompt like this one, you start out with lots of material and you get to engage with something you already love: your favorite book! Instead of having to parse through all of the words swimming around in your head when writing, this prompt gives you a set of words to work with right off the bat, while giving enough options to still feel like you’re expressing yourself in the poem. Sometimes a phrase can steer the poem in a new and entirely unexpected direction!

1. Take your favorite book and open it up to a random page. Choose a phrase or a short sentence from the spread you opened up to. This will be the first line of your poem!
2. Open up to a new page and repeat until the poem feels done.
3. Choose a title for your poem at the very end, using the same method.
4. Submit your finsihed poem using the submission form at the top of this page!