PROMPT BY MARGARET ROSS

Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash

Word Prism

1. Choose a commonly used word that interests you in some way.

2. Search your inbox and email archive for all appearances of that word. Copy-paste each sentence containing the word into a blank document. The more sentences the better, but you’ll want at least 30.

3. Now search your text history. Copy-paste all text messages containing the word into your document. Again, the more the better, but you’ll want at least 30. If you come across long texts with multiple sentences, you can just pluck the sentence in which your chosen word appears.

4. At this point, your document should be full of language. Read the whole thing through aloud and notice any lucky juxtapositions that exist already. Are there lines that seem to respond to or revise each other? Are there lines that clash in a powerful way? Are there places where the tone swerves wildly from one line to the next? Are there resonant non sequiturs? Moving echoes? Slant rhymes?

5. Now experiment with arrangement, reordering sentences and phrases on the page and introducing enjambment to create a poem that feels exciting and alive to you. You might splice certain sentences and phrases together or cut language as needed.

6. Your chosen word is your poem’s title.

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Margaret Ross is the author of two books of poetry, A Timeshare (Omnidawn, 2015) and Saturday (The Song Cave, 2024). Her poems and translations have appeared in Granta, Harper's, The Paris Review, and Poetry. She's currently a visiting assistant professor of poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.