The Inspired Poet: Writing Exercises to Spark New Work

by Susan Landgraf

The Inspired Poet , which comes out of years of teaching and leading workshops, offers writing exercises, prompts, poems, and facts for poets, teachers, workshop leaders, and prose writers. They are meant to be invites for the Muses to come visit. Even if you're not a poet and don't like to write, these invites might entice you to see yourself and the world in a new light. This book may give an insight into grief or a respite from grieving for something or someone lost--or for celebrating something found. The exercises in The Inspired Poet can be used for your personal writing practice, for writing groups, leading poetry workshops, and in the classroom. Both novice writers and established writers can find inspiration in the 37 chapters of this book, each of which offers unique exercises on such topics as structure, pop culture, revision, mythology, grief, relationships, nature, symbolism/imagery, women's voices, psychology/sociology, and personal reflections on creativity/inspiration.

208 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you write poetry? Have you thought about writing poetry? Do you teach the writing of poetry? Yes, to any of the above? Read this book. Buy this book for poet and writing teacher friends.

Landgraf is an inspired poet herself. (I've read her poetry and heard her read.) She has taught the writing of poetry. This book includes an array of unusual exercises. Each short chapter suggests a direction to go with new poems. There's a bit about that theme or point of entry. Next Landgraf presents the exercises, prompts for new work. Finally, in each chapter, she features example poems, poems designed to inspire or connect the reader. Even without the original prompts (there are dozens I've not seen before and I've read many craft books), this book is wonderful as an anthology of more than 100 poets' work.

[Fern · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wildly disappointing… I think if you’re looking for a set of prompts, this one works. But it’s so structured and there are so many it’s hard to focus and be in the stillness of them. They are incredibly closed-ended, to the point that you can feel the prompt-writer was attempting to predict what you were going to say even in their questions. Incredible creativity-stunter. Hard no.