Tweetspeak Poetry

Animate: Snowflake Poetry Prompt

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animate-snowflake-poetry-promptAnimate is a poetry prompt that focuses on speaking as if we are a particular object. This time, we’re speaking as a snowflake.

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Speak in the first person.

2. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives.

3. Consider where you—the snowflake—are located, or where you came from, or where you are going. Or, speak as if you have a special desire or concern: maybe you are hungry, missing something, afraid of a sight or sound, in love with another snowflake that is like you or not like you. Be creative. Any type of situation is fair game.

4. Consider doing a little research about the object you will speak as: its history, associated words, music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details, so you can speak convincingly and intriguingly about yourself.

That’s it! We look forward to hearing you speak poetically, from the viewpoint of an object— a snowflake.

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Featured Poem

From a recent poetry prompt, here’s a poem from Rick we enjoyed:

Blue Berry

How merely a cup of milk
and the morning’s last blue berry,
rising slick,
with wisps of white rolling
over its sides,
lost in a dark thrown bowl
made firm by fire,
for a moment holds us all in its form.

The world conspires to make more
of itself with its spark and sap.

—by Rick Maxson

Photo by Liz West, Creative Commons via Flickr.

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Browse poetry teaching resources

How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland

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Heather Eure
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Comments

  3. Patricia McGoldrick says

    For the Animate prompt, I was inspired to be a snowflake!

    Surprise!

    On New Year’s Eve
    I landed in the city

    Before I knew it
    I started to tumble,
    not feeling so pretty

    I twirled with my peers
    slowly at first
    then faster and faster
    on a downward course

    So fun to be there
    for this last snow roller of the year
    so round and fluffy
    landing there in the clear!

    All of a sudden
    someone opened the house door.
    When she saw our path on the ground
    she broke into a cheer
    singing Auld Lang Syne and
    happy new year!

     2017 Patricia McGoldrick

    Reply

  4. Noel Fagerhaugh says

    heat within, outside
    a cold too deep to rise from

    swimming in drifts I find
    only presence of mind

    fringed and solid thoughts
    dangling, lashing

    freezing me to the many
    caught in rivers made roads

    through currents and eddies
    I fall, sinking

    children shout and stretch out arms
    collecting their prize

    my medallions of ice

    Reply

  6. Cathleen Perez says

    All I’ve desired
    lies a few feet away,
    where my kindred rests,
    painting the oak in a
    crisp shade of ivory.

    A gentle breeze guides me
    toward my final destination,
    as I join the others onto
    my new, slender home,
    resting my limbs,
    blending in wintry life.

    Reply

  7. Joanne says

    I glide, with all the others,
    Through this cold winter sky
    Collectively,
    We are snowfall
    Or storm
    Or sometimes, blizzard
    Yet I remain my own
    Six-sided, crystalline self
    Even as I land,
    One of many,
    Whevever the wind takes me

    Reply

  8. Monica Sharman says

    Snow Crystal

    “How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.” –Henry David Thoreau

    It was the water.

    I tumbled
    through ever changing temperatures,

    humidities, conditions in the clouds
    but I know it was the water,
    molecules bound

    in a hexagon, a crystal,
    a lattice freely lending me
    its six-sided symmetry,
    simplicity becoming complex

    yet precise—I am growing into
    one-of-a-kind, do you know why?
    None of the others took the same
    path. None of us were choreographed
    into the same starry dance.

    Reply

  9. Donna Falcone says

    To the little blonde haired boy
    with eyelashes longer than all of me,
    and eyes bluer than the
    whole of the sky waiting to peek
    through the clouds above this flurry

    thank you for tipping back your head
    just when you did,
    holding still as a stone
    even though your hat fell off,
    and letting me land
    on the back of your tongue.

    The lore of my ancestors
    is very clear.
    This is a high honor –
    to transcend our
    crystaline glory state,
    wrapped inside
    the warm smile
    of a child.

    Reply

  10. Amy Smarz says

    Floating, Fluttering
    Gently towards the Ground
    Airy as angel wings
    Frozen Butterflies
    Mother nature’s Christmas Gown

    Cold with beauty
    Airy Light
    Fairy’s Paintbrush
    Blankets White
    Dancing down to Winter’s Delight

    Reply

  11. Maureen says

    Snow and Ice

    We speak,
    you bracing

    your words —
    flakes of snow —

    against my slivers
    of ice.

    Picture steles
    deflecting

    the sound
    of loss

    without
    the wanting.

    What breaks
    apart

    becomes two

    floes stilled,
    missing

    their chance
    to collide

    below water.

    Reply

  13. Babs McGrory says

    i am December’s first snowflake
    .
    tonight, i wrap the moonlight
    with grace and kisses
    as i am December’s first snowflake…
    the first Snowflake
    to realize for the fist time
    the gossip
    as they say, “Hey, Snowflake…”
    .

    *Note: I wrote this as a found poetry piece which you can see via the link below, since I can’t post an image here. Thank you for the fun prompt & inspiration! 😀
    .
    https://www.facebook.com/vowel.mouth.poet/photos/p.734605480029122/734605480029122/?type=3&theater

    Reply

  14. Elizabeth Marshall says

    The Melting

    Transformation from new born to melted flake, in a flash
    I am frozen in fear
    At the very thought
    Inert upon the ice-covered earth Possibility stops me cold
    As I gaze on mystery

    In the vicegrip of my heart
    I hold every time we fell
    Steadfast
    Slices of memory cling
    Branch on branch
    The tendrils of my heart
    Too warm to stop
    Our melting

    If you go first
    Return again
    And land
    New born ice-made glisten, dance
    Rest please on my tear stained
    Lips
    Kiss of life and kiss of death

    Reply

  15. Prasanta says

    Love the Blue Berry Poem. So many gems on this whole page of comments!

    Snowflake

    Shall I join the others who have gone before me
    And pile on an unfamiliar roof?
    Or will I end up as a snow man,
    built by small folk with knitted mittens?
    Perhaps I will join the frozen mass piled on your sidewalk
    and stay near your front door all winter
    until you shovel me aside.
    If I land on the street, will I lose myself,
    meld into obscurity?
    Is my life tossed by an impersonal wind
    or caught in your cradled hands?

    Reply

  16. Katie says

    Where, Oh Where?

    As I tumble toward the ground
    I wonder where I will
    be found.

    Will I be put in a hard-packed sphere –
    part of a snowball fight this year?

    Or be on this day
    in a snowbank
    along the highway?

    Will I be blown by the wind
    into a snow fence with my kin?

    Or be part of the biggest this winter,
    the largest snowfall
    seen in many a year?

    Will I be taken for a ride down hill
    on a ziggy-zagging snowmobile?

    Or be scooped up now
    by a lumbering
    snowplow?

    Will I be worn for a second or two
    on a little child’s cold snowsuit?

    Or just be – pooh,
    stepped on by
    her daddy’s snowshoe?

    Where ever I land, I’m sure it will have been
    an interesting journey until the end.

    Reply

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