Earth Day Prompt with Rhythm

“Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” 
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town


More Earth Day Writing Prompts!

Happy Birthday to Thornton Wilder! Enjoy the video of rhythm instruments below. Get inspired for Earth Week and find something that you might normally throw away and use it to make something beautiful. For your writing prompt, write a story, poem or reflection about the people in video coming together to make music.

Writing Prompts for Earth Day 2016

American Life in Poetry: Column 456

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE 

For Earth Day, I thought I would bring up a beautiful poem from Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. 

First, read Kooser's comments and the poem below. The prompts will follow the poem. 

American Life in Poetry: Column 456

Many of us feel a great sense of pride as we watch our children discover the world for the first time. Here, Kathleen Driskell, a Kentucky poet, shows us her own daughter taking that first taste of a late summer watermelon she has grown herself. 

Seed  by Kathleen Driskell

In first grade, you met Squanto,

nearly naked and

on his haunches, showing

those thick-headed pilgrims

how one must plant fish

to grow maize. And in autumn

you dove into the lobotomized

pumpkin, into the gooey pulp

and seeds, raising a clump

like a slimy chandelier

from the Titanic. And now

in late summer, daughter,

you smile, holding a ripe watermelon,

cut in half, exposing the black

seed within its bright red heart.

Your melon. How proud you are

to think you grew this delicious

thing all on your own.

You can read more poems from the column at this link American Life in Poetry

Earth Day Writing Prompts

Poetry and Nonfiction

1. Write about a memory of yourself as a child (or a child you know or have known) having an active or proud moment connected to nature. It can be catching a fish, climbing a tree, or ?????

Free write about this moment for about 5 minutes.

2. After your free-writing, form your ideas into a poem or a short memoir. Use the word bright in your poem (any other word that means bright) as an adjective not to describe the child, but to describe something from nature that is in the poem. 

Fiction

Think of a character for the little girl in the poem. Give her a name and personality. Write a short story about her and the watermelon. Make the watermelon seeds magical and make something interesting happen!

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For Discussion:

1. What are the three scenes in this poem?

2. Which two seasons are mentioned in the poem? 

3. Why do you think the poem is called "Seed"?

Earth Day Creative Writing Prompts

Happy Earth Day!

Below is last week's column from American Life in Poetry.  I chose Linda Hogan's poem "The Sandhills" for your enjoyment.  I hope you like the poem.

Creative Writing Prompts

Fiction:  Write a short story that starts with 2 characters watching sandhill cranes.  Where are the characters?  What are they talking about?  Note:  This can be written as drama, too. 

Poetry:  Write a poem with a bird in it.  10 lines or less.

Nonfiction:  Reflect on watching birds.  If you are fortunate to look out your window and see a bird, just observe for a few minutes, then reflect on life via a journal entry.

Free write prompt starters from Hogan's poem:

From the following lines, free-write for 3 minutes and see what you get!

1.  The wind is. . .

2.  The shine of water. . .

3.  Above strands of earth. . .



Commentary by Ted Kooser, from American Life in Poetry

This column originates in Nebraska, and our office is about two hours’ drive from that stretch of the Platte River where thousands of sandhill cranes stop for a few weeks each year. Linda Hogan, one of our most respected Native writers and Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation, perfectly captures their magic and mystery in this fine poem. 

The Sandhills  by Linda Hogan

The language of cranes

we once were told

is the wind. The wind

is their method,

their current, the translated story

of life they write across the sky.

Millions of years

they have blown here

on ancestral longing,

their wings of wide arrival,

necks long, legs stretched out

above strands of earth

where they arrive

with the shine of water,

stories, interminable

language of exchanges

descended from the sky

and then they stand,

earth made only of crane

from bank to bank of the river

as far as you can see

the ancient story made new.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem reprinted from Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, Ed. by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, The Univ. of Arizona Press, 2011, by permission of Linda Hogan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.