Game 1: You’ve just received a letter from the Mayor of your home town saying they are set to host The Olympics / The World Cup / Crufts / Great British Bake Off (you choose the competition).
Game 2: The Mayor has asked you to write a poem absolutely bigging up your home town for the opening ceremony. They’re keen on highlighting the great bits but also putting a positive spin on any negative / grubby bits.
Game 1: Imagine you are on the reality TV show Married At First Sight. It’s the night before your wedding with someone you’ve never met.
Game 2: Spend 10 minutes writing your wedding vows for a total stranger. Consider: What kind of partner do you promise to be? How will you act? What do you wish for you both? Why are you doing this? Etc.
Game 1: Google image search ‘Front doors’.
Game 2: Pick a door you like (or dislike).
Game 3: Take 8 minutes to write a poem about what goes on behind that door.
Game 1: Think of a word you think you use a lot (eg. How or why or what or when or who.)
Game 2: Search for that word in the search bar of your phone’s WhatsApp or text message app.
Game 3: Spend a few minutes jotting down some of the lines you find in those messages and make a poem using those sentences.
Game 1: Think of a nameless stranger you saw in the street recently or out the window or on the news or on TV.
Game 2: Give them a name.
Game 3: Write the Early Life, Career and Personal Life (maybe even Controversies) sections of their Wikipedia page. Get descriptive and be specific.
Game 1: Find a recipe online or from a book.
Game 2: Think of a person in your life.
Game 3: Write INGREDIENTS OF YOU at the top of a page.
Game 4: Keep the numbers, weight, method etc (eg. ‘3 large diced’) but replace all the foodstuff (eg. ‘Onions’) with qualities, hobbies, traits, charming stories etc of the person you thought of. Make the list longer if you need.
Game 1: Grab a book you love and choose any old paragraph from one of the first pages.
Game 2: Reformat the paragraph so it’s a poem made of 10-syllable long lines.
Game 3: Now delete every other line.
Game 4: Fill in the gaps with your own 10 syllables to make it a rhyming couplet poem.
(Credit the author if you share the poem.)
Game 1: Write down the first word that pops into your head.
Game 2: Write down the following: 3 words that rhyme with the original word, 2 synonyms of the original word and 1 opposite of the original word.
Game 3: Take 7 minutes to write a poem in any style you like, but make sure you use all 7 words you’ve written at some point.
Game 1: Take a minute to think of a celebrity you like.
Game 2: Get into a blazing row with them for 4 minutes. Consider: What would it be about? What would you say? How far would you go? Would you get personal?
Game 3: Spend 5 minutes trying to make up with them in a poem.
Game 1: Listen to the instrumental piece
Tall Tales by Human Pyramids.
Game 2: Listen to it 3 more times on repeat and see if any lyrics or a poem come to mind.
