Welcome to Days 7 and 8 of my personal month-late NaPoWriMo challenge. You can check out my previous post here, or click here for Day 1.
The weekend turned out to be fairly busy so I’ll be doing two days worth of prompts in this post. Both prompts will deal with ekphrastic poetry, or poetry inspired by another work of art.
Prompt 7: Music
Choose a song or piece of music that you really enjoy, and write a poem that engages with it in some way. For this prompt, you can engage with that piece of music specifically, or use the music as a way of choosing a topic for your poem. Maybe there are some song lyrics that give you the feels?
I’ve been looking forward to sharing this prompt because I want to do a poem inspired by the song Papaoutai by Stromae. (Stromae is from Belgium, so yes, the song is in French.) I stumbled upon this song when Pentatonix did a cover of it a year or so ago, and even with my limited French from back in high school I found myself really appreciating its lyrics. It’s a song about absent fathers, and my favorite part, (using this translation I found online) is:
Qu’il part très souvent travailler
He often leaves to go work
Maman dit « travailler c’est bien »
Mommy says “working is good”
Bien mieux qu’être mal accompagné, pas vrai ?
Better to be there than in bad company, right?
There’s so much to say about this. I’m especially thinking about how the rigid gender roles we impose on men and women limit our relationships with our fathers, because they are pushed to be the sole or at least primary breadwinners, which leads to them spending little time at home. I’ve seen it in my own life, though certainly not to the extent that some people do.
Prompt 8: Art
Spend some time on Google, find a visual work of art–a painting, drawing, or sculpture–to use for inspiration, and write a poem. You can go a lot of different ways with this. You can focus on the emotions you feel when looking at the art. Maybe there are people in the painting, so you can give them identities. I once wrote a poem about how overrated the Mona Lisa is, so if you’re not a big fan of something, you can even use this prompt to complain. You can even just use this as a way of practicing your poetic description, and try to come up with some unique ways to describe the painting or sculpture you’re looking at.
If you try these, or any of the prompts I’m sharing throughout this month, let me know! If you try a prompt on your blog, share the link! I’ll check it out.
I also love to read any thoughts or writing tips you may have. Feel free to share them in the comments!
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