If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 10/5/23 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  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

  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

My Thoughts

You might have seen the “Advice Cards” in gift shops, bookstores, or in nonprofit mailer campaigns: a short poem with advice from a mountain, a tree, an animal, a cloud, etc. Aside from being clever and cute, this trend may have achieved the status of a fad for good reason: it works as an excellent prompt for poetry. Kim Stafford’s poem, Advice From A Raindrop, celebrates the small and puts our own smallness in perspective. Who, among us, has not felt small and inconsequential at some point, especially in the midst of forces beyond our control? Everyday, we are bombarded with news of war, brutality, abuse, trafficking, a house divided, and wild conspiracies. It is hard to escape a grueling sense that everything is spiraling out of control. Some wild optimist (it may have been the Dalai Lama) claimed the amount of good going on in the world right now far outweights the bad. That is the storm that changes everything. At least it is the one to which I want to be a raindrop.

Advice From A Raindrop

Do you think you’re too
small to make a difference? Tell me
about it. You think you’re
helpless, at the mercy of forces
beyond your control? Been there.

Think you’re doomed to disappear,
just one small voice among millions?
That’s no weakness, trust me. That’s
your wild card, your trick, your
implement. They won’t see you coming

Until you’re there, in their faces, shining,
festive, expendable, and eternal. Sure you’re
small, just one small part of a storm that
changes everything. That’s how you win,
my friend, again, and again, and again.

—Kim Stafford
https://www.kimstaffordpoet.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. Write your own “Advice from…” Poem. Pick whatever you like and imagine the advice that would come.

  2. What cause or purpose do you feel desperately needs attention even though you may feel too small to make a difference?

  3. Journal or write a poem about what makes you feel helpless. How do you manage it? Do you feel compelled to focus on it? Do you try to avoid it? How do you deal with it?

  4. What is your wild card? Journal or write a poem about your trick, your way of dealing with a situation. For instance, I try to learn to the equivalent of “really?” in a forengn language and use it judiciously when I am with a group of native speakers, timing it so that they think I might have actually understood because they did not see it coming

  5. Journal or write a poem about a situation or time when others did not see you (or someone else) coming? If it helps, use the prompt,”They didn’t see me (hm/,her/them) coming when….”

  6. Journal or write a poem about your sense of being one small part of a storm of change.

  7. Journal or write a poem listing the good that outweighs the bad in everyday life.

  8. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.