PLEASE NOTE THAT POSTS THAT DO NOT MEET THE RULES FOR ENTRY MAY BE EXCLUDED FROM THE INK WELL
Welcome to Week 4 of The Ink Well's Summer Poetry Challenge. Each week you will be offered two prompts to start your creativity - you can use either prompt or both; you can include them in your poem or use them to get your thoughts going and see where they take you ... and never mention the prompts in your writing at all!
Everyone who meets the Rules for Entry will:
- Receive 100% upvote from The Ink Well.
- Be included in the draw for 500HP delegation for 7 days.
- Have a chance to be a Show Case Post in future weeks.
Entries that meet the criteria will also be curated for a curie vote.
The 500HP delegation and The Showcase Post will be announced seven days after this post pays out.
How To Enter The Challenge
The Ink Well is about encouraging high quality creative writing. The challenge is open to everyone, whether you are an experienced writer or just starting your writing journey. Every week, there will be two fresh prompts to help you develop your writing skills.
Week 4 Prompts
Option 1: thorn
Option 2: the goat
You can use either prompt - or both - to create a poem. You can include the prompt in your poem, or use it as a jumping off point for your ideas.
The Fiction Challenge has the same prompts as the Poetry Challenge each week.
See all the prompts for the Summer Season.
Rules of Entry
- your entry must be posted in The Inkwell Community.
- poetry must be a maximum of twenty lines, excluding the title.
- include tags: #theinkwell #challenge #poetry.
- title format: theinkwell poetry challenge | title of your work.
- post a link in the comments of this post.
Remember, original work only - no plagiarism or re-posts!
Check the Curation Policies and Community Rules before you submit.
The deadline is when this post pays out on Monday 15 June 2020.
What We Are Looking For
The vision for The Ink Well is all about encouraging and rewarding high quality creative writing. We know that everyone has to start somewhere, and that your writing skills improve the more you write. To help you develop those skills, we've set out some categories that you will want to think about.
Poetry is the most complex literary form and spending between four and six hours developing and editing a poem over the course of a week would not be unusual for a well-crafted poem. This is the quality The Ink Well is looking for.
| Category | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Voice and Setting | Who is speaking? Is it one or many voices? Where and when is the poem is set? How does this affect the poem? |
| Tone and themes | What mood or emotion does the poem create in the reader? What ideas is the poem expressing? How is that shown? |
| Structure | Has the writer chosen a poetic form? How does the form and rhythm (eg fast and breathless) affect the poem? |
| Style | The writer's use of words, imagery, metaphor and simile. |
| Presentation | Does the presentation and formating enhance the writing? |
Any Questions?
If you have any questions, put them in a comment below.
Before We Go
Don't forget to read other people's entries and leave them a comment. The Ink Well will be searching for and tipping good comments!
We're looking forward to reading your poems!
Poetry Inspiration
Altered Nature by Mary Jean Chan
This poem was written before the arrival of Covid-19 in the UK.
Altered Nature
The birds had their tongues tied to silver strings as they hung
mid-air in silence. I was kneeling on the wet earth, crying out.
A disembodied voice informed me that nectar was being slowly
harvested from their throats, that this was the only way. Heat
from their flailing bodies pressed my eyes into my skull. I tried
to hold myself together in the dream but could not. Once awake,
I could not feel tender. The brutality of all architecture stunned
me wherever I looked. What were we – as a species – doing?
I finally summoned the will to write Life on my to-do list but
kept postponing the task. I had been dreaming of the dying,
because I could not ignore the news from home, country not
so far from the heart. This viral uncertainty keeping me afraid
of intimacy. I did not want to touch what others had touched,
feared any public surface. Even the air was menacing, invisible
droplets omnipresent. A persistent cough soon developed, as if
to taunt me. My father, a rheumatologist, texts to say he is well,
reminds me that he went through the SARS epidemic and never
took a day off work. I have inherited this stubborn, Calvinist ethic.
Today, I return to where breath feels possible. My therapist asks
me: What do you want? I think to myself: mother’s gaze / straight gaze
/male gaze / white gaze… I am ashamed to confess that I want to
be reborn as the brother, the beloved son, the future patriarch.
I want to see this torso in a different light, beam on it a kinder
gaze as I wait for something to give. I read a poet’s words: Mostly,
we do not fail to go on living. There is fire on the streets of a city I still
love and fire in the earth’s lungs as the hour ticks on. Had I simply
imagined this intimate scene: the mother lying prostrate at the feet
of her child, begging for a miracle, or was it the other way around…
Mary Jean Chan at The Poetry Society
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