How to write a poem in 5 minutes without thinking about it

Happy Friday.

Today is a tiny writing lesson--no, let's call it an example. I'm going to use a poem written by my almost-10-year-old nephew, Campbell.

How it worked: I fed him a prompt for every line and he wrote the following short poem. Ok, I admit I took his dictation. But he was sporty enough to respond to me sitting down next to him, opening up a notebook and saying, basically, go.

Here's the poem:

The Wonderful Life of a Trophy Winner
By Campbell Mishel

Someone won a trophy
The orange grapefruit is tasty
The smell of cactus flowers blooming—
They smell like the remote!
The TV sits in the flower field
Grandpa and the honking horns of Paris
And I sit in this chair with my cup of coffee.

You could say this poem employs stacked images. For example, the individual lines seem unrelated but by stacking images and creating a collage of senses, the reader is left with a feeling of something. For me, it feels like someone reminiscing.

Want to know how this poem was written?

In brackets I'm going to write each prompt I fed to Campbell. And you'll see how easy it can be to play with writing--even p-p-p-poetry. The best part of it, is you can write with someone else--a friend, child or young person, even yourself.

Ok, here we go. First, off, I used a trick written of in an earlier post about Looking Up. The poem line is in itals.

[First, I told Campbell to look around, find an object, put it in a line. We're sitting at a kitchen table with the TV nearby. As his attention wandered I said, Don't think about it, just give me a line.]
Someone won a trophy

[repeat above instructions and add a taste]
The orange grapefruit is tasty

[now insert a smell]
The smell of cactus flowers blooming—

[What exactly does it smell like; he took his cue from an object in the room]
They smell like the remote!

[Insert an image from nature; and he still keeps bringing in surrounding objects]
The TV sits in the flower field

[Now mention a place, or a person]
Grandpa and the honking horns of Paris

[I told him this was the last line--bring it home, boy!]
And I sit in this chair with my cup of coffee.

Then I asked Campbell to think about a title -- and that there wasn't a better or worse/right or wrong title, just to play around with it. Look how he instrinctively took the feel of the poem and titled it: "The Wonderful Life of a Trophy Winner."

Pretty cool huh? Young minds have amazing creative resources. We can learn from them.

Happy Friday and writing and playing. Don't forget to make it fun.

Campbell taking a celebratory photo of writer and auntie, post poem.