Unlock Autumn’s Secrets: 4 Powerful Poetry Prompts to Spark your Creativity
With the change of the seasons, so too do we sense imminent change within – and if you don’t, perhaps you need to be paying closer attention. I personally feel this viscerally, both creatively and emotionally. Our natural state as humans is cyclical like the seasons, and we can harness the collective energy swirling around us at this very moment by channeling it through our writing.
Next to love, I believe words are a powerful force for change, and fall is the perfect time to embrace this.
Some themes we can explore and echo in our writing are as obvious as the amber leaves dangling precariously from the branch: letting go, transformation, nostalgia, the mystery of what comes next. Fall is symbolic of endings, but as one thing ends, another begins. What will come of your inevitable new beginning? What do you sense lying dormant deep within? What hopes and dreams are beginning to take root as others fall away to cultivate the necessary space to shelter them as they grow?
This week, I challenge you to explore these themes through poetry. Below, I have listed 4 separate titles of potential poems. Use these titles as a jumping off point for your own work. What do they mean to you? How can you tap into the aforementioned themes and encapsulate them in a poem as they relate to your own life?
1. “Downwind” – There is only one furled leaf left clinging desperately to the tree on a windy day, symbolic of something within you. What are you letting go of? What wisdom can you find in the decay?
2. “What They Never Expected” – Imagine you are incubating for your next phase of life. Reflect on who have you been, are, and will become. What do you emerge as?
3. “Those Eyes Sing the Story” – Choose an old photograph that brings up nostalgia. Write a poem from the perspective of someone in that photo. What messages do they have for you?
4. “Fogtalkers & Folktales” – Picture yourself walking along a foggy, mysterious path. How do you feel about what lies at its end? Use your intuition rather than logical thinking mind to write this one. Tap into your inner knowing to channel through your writing what is next for your life as if it is already legend.
Share your poems and thoughts in the comments or tag us on Instagram @poetryrise