Food-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts with Barbara Crooker

VEGETABLES ON KITCHEN COUNTER
© Elenat | Dreamstime.com

Hello and Happy Friday!

Today’s guest prompter is one of my favorite poets, Barbara Crooker.  You can read about her at the end of the blog entry today.  I highly recommend visiting her website and reading some of her poems.

Many thanks to Barbara for preparing our creative writing prompts today, and thank you to poets Diane Lockward and Ron Wallace for giving us permission to showcase their poems as excellent examples that we hope will inspire you. 

Barbara Crooker says, “I like to use food prompts when I’m teaching workshops, because even if the writing exercise doesn’t go anywhere, you can always eat the prompt.” 

Enjoy the two poems below and you will find Barbara’s prompts after the poems. 

Bon Appetit!

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To a Potato

by Diane Lockward  (from her new book Temptation by Water)

I love the smell of you just before bathing,

the earth that clings to your skin,

your skin scrubbed and peeled, salted and eaten raw,

prelude to the flesh inside,

pale flesh, multitudinous pleasures,

tender and hot, steam rising from the slit,

coarse, squashy, and fluffy, requiring a ritual

of preparation, the recklessness of butter.

Bit of a bother, actually, and rather dull on your own,

always in need of enhancement.

Sliced and diced, mingled with cheddar,

sautéed, and restuffed into your skin,

the Marilyn Monroe of potatoes.

As I clutch you, plump and firm, in my palm,

I recall your humble roots, your poisonous leaves,

you among potato pickers, a crude tuber,

feeding so many mouths, sidekick to fried hunks of fish.                                                                       

You are a fat, dirty spud, a misshapen blob

of starch, carbohydrates, and useless calories,

disreputable nightshade, consort to blight and famine.

Some days I think you are merely a side dish.

Nights I suffer the pangs of starvation,

tantalized by dreams of french fries,

my mouth stuffed with crisp strips of gold.

You Can't Write a Poem About McDonald's

by Ronald Wallace

Noon. Hunger the only thing
singing in my belly.
I walk through the blossoming cherry trees
on the library mall,
past the young couples coupling,
by the crazy fanatic
screaming doom and salvation
at a sensation-hungry crowd,
to the Lake Street McDonald's.
It is crowded, the lines long and sluggish.
I wait in the greasy air.
All around me people are eating—
the sizzle of conversation,
the salty odor of sweat,
the warm flesh pressing out of
hip huggers and halter tops.
When I finally reach the cash register,
the counter girl is crisp as a pickle,
her fingers thin as french fries,
her face brown as a bun.
Suddenly I understand cannibalism.
As I reach for her,
she breaks into pieces
wrapped neat and packaged for take-out.
I'm thinking, how amazing it is
to live in this country, how easy
it is to be filled.
We leave together, her warm aroma
close at my side.
I walk back through the cherry trees
blossoming up into pies,
the young couples frying in
the hot, oily sun,
the crowd eating up the fanatic,
singing, my ear, eye, and tongue
fat with the wonder
of this hungry world.

(Note:  “You Can’t Write a Poem About McDonald’s” by Ronald Wallace appeared in Long for This World:  New and Selected Poems.)

Poetry Writing Prompts:

Write a poem addressed to another fruit or vegetable.

Or do your own take on the potato.

Or write a poem in the voice of (written by) a fruit or a vegetable.

Or write an anti-poem, such as “You Can’t Write a Poem About McDonald’s” by Ron Wallace

   

Fiction Writing Prompts: 

Try to work a potato into your plot line at a pivotal moment.

Or see how you can use the likes/dislikes of these spuds to reveal an aspect of one of your characters.

Non-Fiction Prompts (memoir, journal entry, creative non-fiction):

What sensory images do you associate with potatoes?  What early childhood memories do you have about eating your first potato?

Barbara Crooker lives and writes in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and son.  Her books are Radiance, winner of the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 Paterson Award for Excellence in Literature; and More (C&R Press, 2010) http://www.amazon.com/More-Poems-Barbara-Crooker/dp/193619600X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270034803&sr=1-6 .  Her poems appear in a variety of literary journals and many anthologies, including Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor)(Viking Penguin) and the Bedford Introduction to Literature. Visit her website: www.barbaracrooker.com

Earth Day Creative Writing Prompts with Peace in Wild Things

© Paul Schneider | Dreamstime.com

Because Friday is Earth Day, and it is still National Poetry Month, I thought I would share one of Ted Kooser's earlier column's from American Life in Poetry.  Please enjoy the column which features a poem by Wendell Berry, and your prompts will be waiting for you below.

American Life in Poetry: Column 17

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened, or worrying about what's coming next. Very little can be done about the past and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself over to nature.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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. Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998. Published and reprinted by arrangement with Counterpoint Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group (http://www.perseusbooks.com/). All rights reserved. Introduction copyright © 2009 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.

Poetry Writing Prompt:

Wendell Berry ends his poem, "I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

What is the grace of the world to you?  Write about the grace of the world as it relates to nature with a poem titled, "The Grace of the World."

Fiction Writing Prompt:

Write a scene where a character discovers some peace in something wild, something from nature.  What was the conflict the character was facing, and how did nature bring him or her to ease?  Show us all that in your writing.

Creative Nonfiction Writing Prompt:

Pick something in nature you truly enjoy and write about how it enriches your life.

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Creative Writing Prompts with Cat, Dog, and Random Words

Creative Writing Prompts

Today your prompts are based on the picture below along with some random words.

Random Words:  bus, breeze, heeled, baby blue, jungle, parallel, lift, moon, imagine, wild, icy white, sway, tight, away, poppy, seek, speckled, luck

Fiction Writing Prompt: 

Write a story about  what happened before the cat and dog arrived where they are now.  Use at least 5 of the random words in your story. 

Caption Writing Exercise:  Write a caption for this photo using one of the random words in your caption.  After you write the caption, you can write a  paragraph about what happens next. 

Poetry Writing Prompts: 

1.  Use at least 5 of the random words in a short poem about any subject of your choice in 15 lines or less.

2.  Give one of the animals a name and write a poem about the animal.  Use at least 4 of the random words in your poem.

Bonus Writing Practice Prompt:  Make an opening line with at least four of the random words.  Use it for an opening line of a story or poem.  You can use any other words you want to in your opening line, but limit your sentence to under 18 words.

Many thanks to the photographer of today's photo, Jiri Vaclavek , and Dreamstime.com for making this photo available.

If you would like to celebrate National Poetry Month by learning more about poetry, I highly recommend the book below by Steve Kowit.