One morning in April, Wendo Kenyanito, a schoolteacher in Nairobi, Kenya, came across a poetry prompt online. The prompt was unusual – rather than just focusing on a theme, it presented a structure, with gaps for people to fill in. Intrigued, Wendo decided to take the poetry prompts to his English Literature class full of 15- and 16-year-olds.
“I chose ‘The Affirmation Poem’,” said Kenyanito. “It was an easy way to introduce them to poetry and get them to start penning down their own ideas.” What emerged from that session was a whole variety of verses, written by the students who read them out to each other. The poems were so loved that they decided to hang some on the boards around the class – for many, the first poems they had ever created. The poetry prompts Kenyanito gave to his class were created halfway around the world, by American poet and educator Joseph Fasano.
41-year-old Fasano – author of two novels and five books of poetry, one of which is forthcoming in 2024 – first started to share the prompts in April on Twitter. They have since been retweeted thousands of times; people have responded with their own poems in the replies, many whose first language is not English; and Fasano has shared email responses from places as far apart as Hawaii, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Ukraine. Kenyanito, too, emailed his class’s poems to Fasano, who then posted them on his timeline.
Fasano spoke to Scroll about his poetry prompts: How he came up with them, why he thinks people have responded to them in such numbers, and what the future of this project will be.
Why did you create the prompts?
In January, I was invited to teach a class of second grade students in New Jersey about poetry, for which I decided to create the prompts. The pre-existing structure allowed the students to more or less fill in the blanks. We discussed what the words meant, what a noun and an adjective is, why there were certain repetitions, and I could see them working out how the form comes together. A few months later, their teacher sent me a booklet with all their poems, and I posted one of them online. It all took off from there.
Why do you think the prompts have been so popular, resonating with people across the world?
It’s due to the moment that we’re living in. The pandemic years put many people into a survival state of mind. We may not have always articulated this pressure, but it existed on our minds and in our hearts. It’s like we were holding our breath – and we’re finally letting the breath out. This is a tool to do that.
I also think that the language of poetry has a kind of universality. The poems are about grief, kindness, and friendship – emotions that everyone experiences, in unadorned, elemental language. I also think the very simple language of the prompts allowed for translations to other languages, which is why people the world over could respond to them immediately.
Which responses moved you the most?
A lady sent in a poem created by her mother, who was in her mid-90s and dealing with dementia. It’s extraordinary to see the rich inner life of people who otherwise may not have been able to articulate it for us.
Have you faced any criticism about the prompts, such as suggestions that since so much of the poems are pre-written – the poetry that emerges from them is not poetry at all?
As a fellow poet, I, too would make a distinction between work that is produced by one mind after wrestling with the immensities that underlie poetry, and something like this, which is more of an exercise. This is a gateway drug into poetry!
Did you want to create new writers and readers of poetry, through this project?
That wasn’t my initial motivation but I certainly I hope I have, because, as the old joke goes, more people write poetry than read them! I hope the prompts remind people that reading poetry is not a rational process – it’s about loosening up and experiencing the poem, like you would stand in a cold stream and simply feel the water rather than try to figure out the physics behind it.
Something I did aim for through this project was to use social media as a source of healing and coming together, rather than creating further divisions in an already polarised time. Our ability to connect as human beings is intricately tied up with the ability to communicate with each other and listen to one another, and not simply talk at each other.
I hope that, through the prompts, people are falling in love with what words can do and becoming more open to reading poems instead of being intimidated by them.
Have you kept in touch with any of the people who responded?
Yes, especially teachers, many of whom have carried out the exercise multiple times in their own classrooms. It’s very interesting to see how the same people respond to the same prompt multiple times, creating something new every time.
We heard that the prompts are to be compiled in a more physical form…
That’s right! The TarcherPerigee imprint of the Penguin group is bringing out a book of 50 prompts and a few example poems for National Poetry Month in April 2024. People can send in their own responses to prompts I’ve posted earlier, and some of them could be chosen for the book.
So is this book the culmination of the project?
No, it’s the beginning. I want the book to be used by many people, especially educators
and students, but also those outside the classroom.
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