Juliet Capulet asked it first: "What's in a name?" It's something that I've been thinking about for a few months. I've been in and out of museums a lot lately, and I've been most fascinated by long lists of names on the display cases. This year, I'm trying to stop and smell the roses, to notice the little things that I normally just glaze over. Long lists of names, especially scientific names, falls under the list of things I glaze over. 

Naturally, I found a way to use this in my writing. Isn't it curious, this urge to name things? To point to something and utter some noises, as if naming summons something into existence, makes it clearer and more real. I wanted to share some of the names I have collected in my notebook from the Field Museum's Abbot Hall of Conservation with you. Perhaps you can glean some inspiration, too. 

The Inspiration

1. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

2. Waterlily Borer Moth (Munroessa gyralis)

3. Basswood Leafroller Moth (Pantographa limata)

4. Twin-spotted Sphinx (Smerinthus jamaicensis)

5. False Crocus Geometer (Xanthotype urticaria)

6. Ipsilon Dart (Agrotis ipsilon)

7. Ilia Underwing (Catocala ilia)

8. Yellow-fringer Dolichromia Moth (Dolichromia olinalis)

9. Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea)

10. Peck's Skipper (Polites peckius)

11. White-dotted Prominent (Nadata gibbosa)

12. Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)

13. Harnessed Moth (Apantesis phalerata)

14. Viceroy (Limenitis archippus)

15. Common Wood Nymph (Cercyonis pegala)

The Prompt

Pick a name, any name. Make it the title of your poem and write to it. What captures your attention more? The common name, or the Latin name? Why? Do some free association with each name to explore the connection between the two. What do the sounds bring to mind? If you're feeling really stuck, get your Google on and find some photos of these strange, winged creatures that represent both night and day. 

Happy writing!

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

Look alive, folks. Other than National Poetry Month, February 14 is just about the best time of year for an artsy, writerly-type. Why? Long answer has a lot to do with art mimicking life and love being part of life etc, etc, etc. Short answer is most of us have tried our hand at something romantic. Its hard to resist the siren call of your notebook when you find yourself falling in love.

Let us give you the encouragement you need to give into temptation and tap into the poetry of your ticker with today's Word List prompt. Here's how this works: 

First, you free write. You try to use all 10 words in your free write in a variety of different ways, if you like. Then you write a poem -- again using all 10 words. Challenge yourself and try your absolute best to work all 10 in there. When your brain is in problem-solving mode, you are bound to come up with some unexpected connections. Once your poem is written, feel free to modify and prune as needed -- remove some of the words that just don't fit, etc. Let's get to it! 

Romance 

1. Caress

2. Somersault

3. Flutter

4. Curve

5. Dine

6. Pulse

7. Vulnerable 

8. Rose

9. Heat

10. Flicker

And that's it! Happy romancing!

Looking for more romance? Stay tuned for our At the Heart Reading Series,  and a variety of other Valentines Day inspired prompts! If you can't wait, check out this throwback post about Literary Valentines. Guaranteed to make you laugh at least once.

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

I have the ball, no you have the ball, no I have the ball... Wait, what game is this again?

via GIPHY

The land of sports–players, fans, coaches–can be a very strange subculture. And one of the strangest things about it is its language. Every sport has a different set of terms which, to an outsider, sound like something your one-year-old made up.

And what’s more fun than using silly language to write a silly piece?

So, take a look at these three lists of sports terms. Don’t look up any of the words that you don’t know!

LIST A:

Bonspiel

Vice-skip

Deep square leg

Split end

Hops

LIST B:

Hog line

Bump and run

Yorker

Back stick

Drain

LIST C:

Swingy ice

Pooch kick

Googly

Flop

Flat slap

Now, choose the one in which you know the fewest words. Have some fun, and write a poem using all five! What do you think of when you see “hog line”? A line of pigs? People at an eating competition? Go crazy!

Afterwards, using the same list, write another poem using at least three of the five words. But this time, look up the words before you use them. All these terms come from different sports, so you don’t need to write a piece using three different sports. Use your skill for image and metaphor!

For bonus points, show your poem to a sports fanatic and see how many of the terms they recognize. Were you poetical enough to conceal the terms? Did you want to highlight them? Did you make a sports fanatic see their favorite sport in an entirely new life? Let us know in the comments!

the dwarf planet ceres

(source)

the element beryllium

(source)

at least one dog

(source)

the natural satellite Io

(source)

strike-slip faults

(source)

two-for-one beer specials

(source)

clouds composed primarily of ice

(source)

a man with a moustache who is also not your father

(source)

the extinct volcano Olympus Mons

(source)

a fish without jaws

(source)

at least one artificial satellite 

(source)

the aurorae of Saturn

(source)

fruit salad

(source)

a siderophilic isotope of potassium

(source)

at least one surviving example of soviet monumental architecture 

(source)

at least one book that has never been opened

(source)

the natural satellite Hyperion

(source)

a model of the solar system within the solar system itself

(source)

the planet Mercury 

(source)

at least one Ginkgo biloba

(source)

the heliopause (debatable)

(source)

a radio transmission of ‘starman’ by David Bowie

Read more of Vernon's work here. 

See, even a marble statue feels! You have no excuse.
(photo source)

A couple of weeks ago, someone in my workshop turned in an amazing piece about bodily sensation. I'm talking actual, muscles tightening, throat clenching, skin stretching under pressure bodily sensation.


And that got me thinking.


There's plenty going on in my body as I'm sitting here typing this. My fingers are cold. The edge of the table is digging into my forearms. I'm carrying the weight of my arms in my shoulders. I just cracked my neck. The back of my throat feels dry, so maybe I'll take a break and drink some water.


There, dryness remedied. My lips are still wet.


Most of us don't write about the ways our bodies function, move, occupy space before. Oh sure, we've written about fists clenching, teeth grinding, muscles tensing. But we write about bodily sensations in service of the mood of a piece. Fists clenching–determination. Teeth grinding–anger. Muscles tensing–nervousness. We've written metaphorically about bodies–hearts sinking, bursting, breaking, leaping with joy, skipping beats, swelling. If hearts actually did any of that, we'd have some serious medical emergencies on our hands. We might have written literally about bodies if we've written about sex and/or body politics. But that, I'd wager, is a pretty small part of most people's writing.


Bodies can provide endless writing material, because there's SO MUCH going in them all the time. Use an infinitesimal fraction of what's happening, and you could end up with something really interesting:

1. Sit down, for a minute, two minutes, preferably five minutes and write about the bodily sensations you experience. Is there a breeze brushing over the tip of your nose? Is your stomach uncomfortably distended because of that burger, fries and milkshake you ate for lunch? Is your kneecap pressing into the soft flesh of your calf because your legs are crossed? Like any freewrite, don't think. Feel and transcribe. Oh, and if you end up thinking, "This is stupid," think away, but make sure you transcribe how that feels in your body. 

2. Think about a strong emotion that you've experienced. Do not write that emotion down. Instead, write about how your body experienced that emotion. No hearts breaking here. Since you're still alive and reading this post, I doubt your heart actually broke. Think about how you breathed. Think about where you carry tension in your body. Think about how that part of your body felt. Write it all down. You should still be mostly transcribing at this point. 

3. Now, shape what you wrote in Part 2. Use whatever genre(s) you'd like. Make it artful and fancy. Use some of your favorite writing tricks. But let your piece stay rooted in the body.

BONUS: 

See if someone can guess, based on what you've written, what emotion you're writing about. 

Hey, poets! Ready for your next writing assignment? Today we'll be working with a themed word list as inspiration (and a challenge). 

I hate to be the one to break it to you...but the summer is drawing to a close, and Fall is upon us. I say this assuming you're not like me, who loves Fall and waits all year long for it. I'm gearing up for the leaves and my preferred temperature, SO I'm happy. But you may not be. Either way, give a final salute to the season of greenery with a harvest-themed word list. 

The challenge? Use all these words (or at least a majority) in your poem. Try to really push the boundaries on the uses for these words. Don't be shy --- experiment and expand the meaning! At the end of the writing process, you may decided that some of these words need to come out. That's 100% OK. This prompt is to get you writing and synthesizing and making connections more than anything else. Most of the time, I end up taking out half the words I use from a word list when I'm editing. If you're pleased with the presence of the words, then go with it! The point is, to each his/her own. Do your thang. Be inspired. All that jazz.

Harvest

1. Reap

2. Autumnal

3. Swell

4. Amber

5. Glean 

6. Moon

7. Abound

8. Loam

9. Ripe

10. Equinox

Did you like this word list? Want to see more prompts like this? You're in luck! Check out any of the fine themed word lists below:

1. Floodmark

2. St. Patrick's Day

3. Science

4. Spring

5. The Ocean and Beyond

Hello, esteemed reader. Are you looking for a little inspiration today? Well, turn around and walk away, because this post has BUCKETS of inspiration. After you're done reading this, you'll be compelled to pick up the pen and make sweet love to the page. (Meant in the most PG way possible.)

The source of your endless well of inspiration? Two words.

Collective Nouns.

Have you ever heard of an aerie of eagles? A clew of worms? A congress of baboons? No? How about....a coven of witches? (Easy.) A drift of swans? (Oooh.) A nosegay of flowers? (Huh.) A flourish of strumpets? (Wait, WHAT?) 

In case you didn't catch my drift, those are all collective nouns. And in case you missed it, apparently a group of strumpets has a collective noun. Bonus: whores have one, too: "a miller of whores". I don't know, man. 

Since there are apparently collective nouns for juuuuust about everything out there, I curated a list of my top ten favorites, and then some honorable mentions for good fun. I've also included links at the bottom where you can find even more to inspire your writing practice. Ready? Let's go.

Greatest Hits

1.

2.

3. 

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 

Honorable Mentions

11. A bellowing of bullfinches.

12. A baleful of martyrs. 

13. A rhumba of rattlesnakes.

14. A blessing of unicorns.

15. A neverthriving of jugglers.

16. A smack of jellyfish. 

17. A cry of hounds.

18. A fixie of hipsters. 

19. A charm of hummingbirds.

20. An erst of bees.

BONUS: A holiness of donuts. (Get it?!)

The Prompt

Choice A: Write a poem using one of these collective nouns.

Choice B: Write an acrostic poem using one of these collective nouns. Read more on that here.

Still Thirsty?

Have a tall glass of water. And then check out these lists:

1. Wikipedia - Glossary of Collective Nouns

2. Electric Literature - Supernatural Collective Nouns

Have you ever read Life of Pi? I put off reading it for so long—couldn't tell you why, I never had a reason to spend a decade avoiding the book. Although, I have this little theory about books: when you're ready for a certain story, the book finds you. Like so many things, it's all about timing. Books tend to appear for me at just the right moment. Life of Pi was a book that made a splash so huge I'm still feeling the ripples almost a year later. It made me reflect upon religion, culture, pain, survival, human nature, the balance of ecosystems, the art of storytelling, and most importantly, the power of nature. Specifically, the cruel, beautiful, and vast power of the ocean. It's a book that'll forever mark the landscape of water in my mind. 

This is all relevant because it's the inspiration for the writing prompt you're about to see below. If you haven't read Life of Pi yet, I highly recommend you give it a go. But if it's not the right moment for you to read a story that'll shake you, hold off. Turn your attention to the page and get in some solid writing time for the day with this ocean-inspired prompt.

The Word List

1. Tide.

2. Salt.

3. Sink.

4. Wave.

5. Endless.

6. Unbounded.

7. Swell.

8. Algae.

9. Multitudes.

10. Seaweed.

The Prompt

Here's the deal: use 8 of the 10 words listed above in a poem. It can be any form you'd like, and you can use the words in any grammatical variation if necessary. All you have to do is work in those words and see how creative you can be. 

Looking for more word list prompts to inspire your writing? You're in luck! We currently have four others on the blog:

1. Floodmark

2. St. Patrick's Day

3. Spring

4. Science

That's all! Happy writing!

Spring has sprung, and so has National Poetry Month! If you've been keeping up with our poetry party, you may have noticed that there's a lot going on, from our weekly reading suggestions to our fantastic free printables. Well, we wouldn't be a poetry blog if we weren't introducing new writing prompts for the most important writing month of the year, so if you're ready to write, you're in for a treat. 

Each Tuesday, we will be giving you double the writing fun with two Short n' Sweet prompts (Pssst: if you missed this morning's poetry prompt, you can find it here).

This afternoon, allow our oh-so-festive word list to inspire you...

source

1. Luscious

2. Crisp

3. Inflorescence 

4. Glistening 

5. Greenery

6. Cloudless

7. Bloom

8. Exquisite 

9. Splendid

10. Budding

You know what to do! Write a poem using 5-10 of these words. And don't forget to stop and smell the lovely spring flowers.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY, EVERYONE!

May the streets run amber with beer and the river run green with....food dye. Huzzah! 

via quickmeme.com.

We thought we'd honor this day properly with a word list inspired by St. Patrick's Day. The words we chose relate to everything from the actual story of St. Patrick (you know, the SAINT who started the drunken parades) to the modern-day holiday's interpretation of the story. Hopefully your poem-writing experience will be very merry indeed! 

If you're not familiar with word list prompts, essentially you just write a poem using all (or at least the majority) of these words. After you've fit them all in (or tried your darnedest), you should go back and pare down your lines to finish off your poem. Sound good? OK! 

Without further ado, here is our St. Patrick's Day prompt:

1. apostle

2. emerald 

3. parade

4. patron 

5. amber

6. gulp

7. snake(s)

8. trinity

9. clover 

10. luck

Happy writing, folks! Stay safe and have fun out there!