Based on an exercise by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
PRISM Prompts is a treasure chest full of muses, wonderings, and inspiration for both seasoned writers who are itching for a new approach to their craft and new writers who are looking for a place to get started, somewhere outside of the blank page. Turn the key, lift the lid, and look inside. Take whatever shines the brightest or the strangest, bring it home with you, and write.
In the past couple of years, I have been lucky to learn from amazing mentors such as Sheryda Warrener, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Alex Marzano-Lesnevich. One of the lessons I seem to keep learning from these geniuses (and others, there are too many to name) is that generating the most genuine poems often involves a sideways approach—a conscious tricking of my mind into letting myself be free on the page, what Sheryda calls “oblique strategies.” For me, these are needed because my heart and mind are full of the desire to be direct, problem-solving, justice-seeking. Of course, that’s part of it too, but for me, directness is the part that comes out the loudest. Loud enough to drown out the wandering softness, the lingering in uncertainty without self-judgment (or self-loathing).
It’s listening to the quiet voice that I have to work on. And fragmentary approaches seem to be very great for my anxious, grief-split artistic impulse.
So, I want to share this exercise I’ve adapted from something Alex Marzano-Lesnevich showed me in their non-fiction class in the UBC MFA, and which I have found almost magical in how well it works. Looks like a fish skeleton, has nothing to do with fish skeletons. Let’s give it a go!
Prompt: Write about everything, mix it up, and see what comes out.
1. For a few days, try to live as fully, strangely, lovingly, enjoyably, and chaotically as feels correct. Let your heart make your decisions and see where it takes you. Take notes on your phone or notebook every time a line comes to you. Write without judgement—hypnagogic ramblings about a strange dream with a twin sibling, an unhinged art gallery trip with a friend, accounts of your strange bodily situations, the incredibly hot person on the street that made your PQ (if you know, you know), an intoxicated train ride, the emptiness of grief, the fullness of a strawberry, etc. This is your time. Indulge, buy $15 of your favourite fruit at the grocery store, be messy, and document loosely.
2. Once you have 20 or so lines, print them out and cut them up. Mix them all around on the floor.
3. Organize them so you can see them all and start arranging them in an order that makes some kind of emotional sense (but not too much sense.) As you do this, take stock of what’s there and what feels suddenly missing; write hinges between phrases on scrap paper and fit them in.
4. Tape together the strings of moments, feelings, images, jokes, and then lay them down by your computer/notebook/writing tool. Copy the phrases down, changing the syntax and diction as needed. Add in anything else that feels missing. Be careful not to fill in all the spaces though.
5. Once it’s all typed out; ¡colorín colorado! you have an unexpected poem draft. Enjoy!
Here are a few of my recent poetry favourites that lean into fragments to various effects and can serve as parallel reading:
Lara Mimosa Montes’ Thresholes
Kimiko Hahn’s Foreign Bodies
Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem
Victoria Chang’s The Trees Witness Everything
Chessy Normile’s Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party
Jenny Xie’s Eye Level
Tawanda Mulalu’s Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die: Poems
Dora Prieto (she/ella) is an emerging poet and comics-maker, cat mami to Benito, and the poetry editor of PRISM international. Her poem “the withholding map” won the 2022 Room Magazine Poetry Contest and she was shortlisted for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her work appears in publications including Acentos Review, Capilano Review, GUTS magazine, and Catapult, and has been exhibited at The Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, the International Comics Arts Festival, and the Belkin Art Gallery. Dora lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations where’s she’s also completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.