1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

Places, Loved Ones

No, I have never found
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim
On everything I own
Down to my name;

To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that it’s not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.

Yet, having missed them, you’re
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wiser to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.

—Philip Larkin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Friday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read Around is Thursday, October 21, 2022 at 5:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

Philip Larkin’s poem, Places, Loved Ones, upends our romantic notions of love and belonging. The western love mythos implies we are merely troubled guests on the earth unless we find our place in the sun; that we are unlucky isolates unless we find our one true soulmate. Hidden in that equation is the sense that love and belonging is not a matter of choice about where to build our lives or whom to love on our journey. We must be taken by the person or place, swept off our feet as they bear us off irrevocably. Anything less is a  form of settling, a kind of giving up in life. It is an easy step from there to feeling that life mashed us, that we are victims of a cruel world that kept us from our heart’s contentment; or to mash ourselves for our poor choices and missed chances.

The western world conspires to have us believe that our happiness and fulfillment is out there: in the life of laughter and luxury we see on the faces of gadget ads and pharmaceutical panaceas that will finally give us a storybook ending. We have our moments of triumph, of good fortune, of saving grace. Storybook endings freeze that moment in time. But life goes on: success comes with a cost and loses its luster, or a storm blows us off course, or we fall in a sinkhole shattering our sense of security. We can stay there at the bottom of the wishing well waiting for some thing or someone to lift us up and bear us off to that perfect place with a soulmate by our side. Or we can climb out, feel our feet on the ground, and choose to love those we love as best we can.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about finding your place in life, whatever that means to you.

  2. What physical place, landscape, or geography calls to you? What in your envrionment allows you to feel at home? Journal or write a poem about that place or that environment.

  3. Journal or write about a time when you “staked your claim” to a place or a position in life.

  4. Have you had the experience of meeting someone and you felt as if they had an instant claim on your heart? If not, imagine what that might be like and journal or write a poem about it.

  5. Journal or write a poem more generally about the “claims” on your heart and how they have shown up in your life. This could be a list poem of those claims or focus on one and describe it using the phrase, “Of all the claims on my heart, the most compelling to me is…”

  6. Describe a moment when you were “swept away” by a person, place, or experiences if it were bearing you off irrevocably..

  7. Consider how you make your space your own in your home or car or office or yard. How do you choose to claim your space? How do you demonstrate your ongoing choice to love the ones you love. You can use the stem sentence: “I choose to love my loved ones by…”

  8. Journal or write about something you “settled” for in life. Or consider writing about how you deal with longing to be in a different place or with different people. You can use the stem sentence, “When catch myself drifting toward elsewhere, I…”

  9. As usual, write about anything else that inspires you from the poem or from life.