Poetry Together
on the theme of ‘Friendship'.
Writing prompts created by Vanessa Raison © 2024
BRAINSTORM
- What types of friendship are there?
- What qualities do you think a friend should have?
- Is friendship a form of love?
- Why do we need friends?
IDEA
Write a poem imagining a friend who comes to tea.
What do you eat and drink? Where do you meet?
What do you say to each other?
Who is the person: real, a character from fiction, imaginary?
I wrote a poem about a Tiger who came to tea in a beach hut, a cross between Judith Kerr’s Tiger and Darcy.
Are you a good friend?
Are you a “drain” or a “radiator”?
Do you exude heat, warmth, energy or do you wash people out and suck them dry?
IDEA
Write a poem about a friend who is either a “drain” or a“radiator”.
Try to extend the metaphor. You could make a shape poem.
Can a sibling be a friend?
My mother used to set up the toy soldiers in battalions for her brother when he came home from boarding school. John Foster, one of my tutors on my PGCE at Westminster College Oxford (when we were lucky enough not only to have PGCEs but also to have them funded) wrote a lovely poem called “My Baby Brother’s Secrets” which I found in William Sieghart’s anthology Everyone Sang (Walker Books, 2021).
IDEA
Think of a game you played with one of your siblings and describe the memory in free verse.
Can you show through your language and tone whether you were friends or following the hierarchy of older and younger siblings?
Haiku
Bashô wrote this haiku:
What voice do you have, Spider
and what is your song
in the Autumn breeze?
Often haikus include the season, nature and can distil an epiphany. They can have a syllabic pattern of 5, 7, 5 and the last line encapsulate the whole poem.
IDEA
Spend twenty minutes a day for a week observing an animal or bird. Write a haiku about it.
What is a friend?
A friend is someone you can talk to
Friends don’t have to be brilliant, spectacular, amazing - they can be just who they are. Molly Naylor captures this wittily in her poem:
You’re Alright
"You’re alright you are, you’re fine."
"You’re six out of ten.
You’re medium cheese."
"You’re an apple, you’re fine.
You’re a biro, it works. You’re flowers from the Esso, they’re still flowers.”
"You’re like when someone has a Q in Scrabble and uses it to spell ‘queen’."
Extracts from 'You're Alright' in Whatever You’ve Got (Bad Betty Press, 2022)
IDEA
Think of a friend and describe how comfortable you feel with them through the imagery you use.
You could start with "You're alright you are, you're fine."
Can you be friends with a pet?
“A dog is a man’s best friend.”
We had a dog called Rusty.
I tried to write a Julia Donaldson-type children’s poem about him.
Rusty’s a Collie who lives by the sea.
He has lots of friends, like you and me.
His favourite dog walk is Sizewell B.
You’ll see him down there every day at 3.
Michelle has a hut with a secret inside
full of bunting and knitting and cloth that is dyed
and tin trays and old clocks and kettles for tea -
if you can’t find Rusty, that’s where he’ll be.
Noel the Fisherman walks on the dunes
with his big woolly hat singing sea shanty tunes
R. wags his tail and scuffs his proud feet.
We know what he’s done. (It’s not very sweet.)
And so on!
IDEA
Write a poem for children about your pet. Try to use rhyme and rhythm.
Friends 4ever
Do you have a best friend for life?
Did you make a blood oath or get married?
Why do you like them so much?
Richard E. Grant wrote a letter to his wife during their marriage in a pocketful of happiness (Gallery Books UK, 2022):
“Being in love with you is the complete re-discovery of the time and feeling of being 5 years old, playing hide and seek, and being able to fit snug inside a drawer or the floor in the back seat of a car, safe as a pillow in its case, warm and wrapped. Living with you is like playing House and Doctors and Nurse Fondle, Murder in the Dark and K.I.N.G spells KING, and when I look to see, it’s you who are always there.”
IDEA
Write a list poem starting with “Being your friend is….”
Do you have an Imaginary Friend?
Christopher Robin had Winnie-the Pooh, Lord Sebastian had Aloysius, I loved Teddy Edward at the Seaside, Mum had a bear puppet called Bruno. The bliss of Imaginary Friends is that they always agree with you, they keep your secrets and they want to play the same games as you.
Have a look at 'The Friend' and 'Us Two' by A.A. Milne in Now We Are Six (Methuen, 1927).
Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh
There’s always Pooh and Me,
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
“Where are you going to-day?” says Pooh:
“Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too.
Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he.
“Let’s go together,” says Pooh.
IDEA
Write a poem conversation between you and Your Imaginary Friend in dialogue
or,
Find a picture of a bear and a human and write their dialogue.
Intergenerational Friendships
Poetry Together brings together young and old to share stories, build confidence, learn from each other, fight loneliness and share tea and cake!
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem 'Every Day' explores this idea beautifully.
"My hundred-year-old next-door neighbor told me:
every day is good day if you have it."
(Everyone Sang, Walker Books 2021)
What do you think she means by this?
IDEA
Can you write a different version of the rest of the poem?
or,
Do you have a neighbour who is a different generation from you, under 18 or over 70? Could you both write poems about your friendship?
National Poetry Day 'Counting'
My poem was 'The Seventh Age', the idea taken from Shakespeare's 'All the World's a Stage' about filial friendship, the inversion when the child becomes the parent.
The Seventh Age
After Mum died, Dad took me for a curry
Nice getting to know you, he said. Dad had
a tooth out in the morning, slept after lunch
and went to Poetry in the evening
Women poets write about themselves, he said
Shall we have cabbage for supper? said Dad
handing me a lettuce. Where is the soup?
Benign cheesey grin like Stan Laurel
I can no longer manage my affairs
Eyes wide and rheumy like dumplings in gravy
It is time for Power of Attorney
Lost soup found in a pan in the cupboard
Brown slip-on shoes on the golf course, one club
How can one manage one’s hygiene if one
is going mad? Large poo in the bidet
Bony hip joints point to the ceiling
I feel almost tearful, said Dad, the thing
is too great to go on and on
Baggy pantaloons, a ghost on the stair
in a white babygro, dentures dangling
Vanessa Raison
Write a poem about a friend or family member in one of the seven stages:
"the infant/Mewling and puking",
"the whining schoolboy",
"the lover/Sighing like a furnace",
"a soldier/Full of strange oaths",
the justice "In fair round belly" "Full of wise saws",
the sixth age with its "shrunk shank" and "slippered pantaloon"
or finally "second childishness and mere oblivion/ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Have you ever been on a road or rail trip with a friend?
Can you remember any smells? What did the food taste like?
What did you wear? Where did you sleep? What did you eat?
What did you see? How do you feel about that trip now? Was there one stand out thing that sums up the whole experience?
IDEA
Write a poem about the trip using four senses: sound, taste, smell and touch but try to avoid using sight.
Hedgehog
Can you be friends with animals? Benjamin Zephaniah says it all in his
Luv Song
I am in luv wid a hedgehog
I've never felt this way before
I have luv fe dis hedgehog
An everyday I luv her more an more,
She lives by de shed
Where weeds and roses bed
An I just want de world to know
She makes me glow.
I am in luv wid a hedgehog
She's making me hair stand on edge,
So in luv wid dis hedgehog
An her friends
Who all live in de hedge....
Poetry Please https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gy6bq1
IDEA
How would you perform one of your poems?
Friendship in Shakespeare
Which plays do these quotations come from?
Who said them to whom?
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears."
"He was my friend, faithful and just to me."
"Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you."
"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel."
"Look like the innocent flower
But be the serpent under't."
"And my two school fellows-
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd."
In a group, brainstorm Shakespeare quotations about Friendship.
IDEA
Try to write a cento, a collage poem using existing lines of poetry!
Now learn your poem of up to 14 lines!
You could make an anthology of poems you like about Friendship and the poems you have written. You can illustrate it, add photographs, maybe give it to someone for Christmas.