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

Ars Poetica

Write each of your poems,
as if it were your last.
In this century, saturated with strontium,
charged with terrorism,
flying with supersonic speed,
death comes with terrifying suddenness.
Send each of your words
like a last letter before execution,
a call carved on a prison wall.
You have no right to lie,
no right to play pretty little games.
You simply don’t have the time
to correct your mistakes.
Write each of your poems,
tersely, mercilessly,
with blood – as if it were your last.

Blaga Dimitrova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaga_Dimitrova
Translated from the Bulgarian by Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman

Prompt Ideas

1. Write your own Ars Poetica poem. It could be about the nature of poetry, the role of the poet, or the form and structure of poems; or about writing, about your own struggles and joys writing, or about what it takes to write poetry, etc.

2. Follow Dimitrova’s lead and write a poem as if it is the last poem you may ever write; or as if it is the “last letter before (your) exectution.”

3. Dimitrova uses a few terse lines to capture the 21st Century. Journal or write a poem that describes your sense of the salient trends of the 21st Century. You can use the prompt, In this century…

4. Journal or write a poem about an unexpected death. You can use the prompt, Death came with (terrifying—or another adjective of your choosing) suddenness…

5. Dimitrova offers the criteria for writing in the face of death. What would you write if you were to “write tersely, mercilessly, with blood…”

6. What do you believe you have a right to do or not to do as a poet/writer?

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

Bonus for those of you who have read this far:

Since there will not be a read around this week due to a conflict, I offer the my own Ars Poetica piece I composed upon reading Dimitrova’s poem as an additional inspiration for your writing:

Line up the poets and put them on the firing line.
They will tell us: I told you so, the world is harsh and cruel.

But when they are gone, we will miss them.
Who then will speak the truth?

When we are busy making hay while the sun shines, the poets speak
of a darkness in our bones no sunny day can illuminate.
They teach us how the mind can turn on a dime from a single phone call.
They point to the dirty earth as a cradle for life.
And they show us that every happily ever after has a short shelf life.

Line up the poets and put them on the firing line.
They will tell us: I told you so: the world is in perpetual renewal.

But when they are gone, we will miss them.
Who then will remind us of who we are?

When we sit on the dry dock with the blues, the poets speak
of a Milky Way sparkling in the darkest night. They teach us how
to live the width, the height, and the depth of as above so below.
They point to the blue sky that lets all weather flow through it and say:
that blue nothing is the stuff our minds are made of.

And they move us to tears and wonder
with every limpid word they send leaping through our hearts.

So, let’s turn the tables:
line up the poets and let them fire!