5 End of Year Writing Prompts

Overview

End of year writing or New Year's Eve prompts can be cliché and nudging in their attempt to capture something grand or summative.  I hope the following prompts are less so!

First Mentor Poem

Not This
OLENA KALYTIAK DAVIS
 
my god all the days we have lived thru
saying
 
not this
one, not this,
not now,
not yet, this week
doesn’t count, was lost, this month
was shit, what a year, it sucked,
it flew, that decade was for
what? i raised my kids, they
grew i lost two pasts–i am
not made of them and they
are through.
 
we forget what
we remember:
 
each of the five
the fevered few
 
days we used to
fall in love.

Writing Prompts

• In a poem, complain about the year 2020, if you like.
• Or, write a poem about the silver linings of a pandemic year.  What new skills did you develop? What did you discover?  Until now what did you ‘forget to remember?’ 
• Or, tell me about what you made in 2020.

Second Mentor Poem

A Toast
ILYA KAMINSKY
 
To your voice, a mysterious virtue,
to the 53 bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing, 
 
to pine, redwood, sworn-fern, peppermint, 
to hyacinth and bluebell lily, 
 
to the train conductor’s donkey on a rope,
to smells of lemons, a boy pissing splendidly against the trees. 
 
Bless each thing on earth until it sickens, 
until each ungovernable heart admits: “I confused myself  
 
and yet I loved—and what I loved 
I forgot, what I forgot brought glory to my travels, 
 
to you I traveled as close as I dared, Lord.”

SOURCE: Poets.org 

Writing Prompts 

• Write a toast (in poem form) to three major things and three minor things.
• Write a toast to the year: to what confused—what I loved—what I dared—to the keeping and the going.  Try some of these phrases:

                   let it be known
                   thank you
                   here’s to ...
                   to the ...
                   cheers to ...
                    a toast to ...
                   bless ...

Remember: Local and personal is more interesting than all-encompassing or grand summations.

Finally . . .

When Giving Is All We Have
ALBERTO RÍOS
                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it--

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

​Source: Poets.org