The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)

Good morning, today I want you to write a poem in the style of an obituary. If you’re not already coming, we have an event at John Rylands this evening: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-aftershock-review-launch-at-john-rylands-research-institute-and-library-tickets-1415279130979?aff=oddtdtcreator All the best Max This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or g...

Hello everyone, I’ve moved into a new house and getting it renovated so there’s a delay while I get it all sorted. The good news is it should be finished soon and I’ll have a lot more time to focus back on all things Podcast etc. Max This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe

So, quickly, today I want you to consider writing a prayer to an object that you take advantage of / ignore because it’s an integral part of your life. For example, a slowly corroding radiator pipe. A light in the bathroom. The cooker fan. Your air-fryer. What do you wish to praise in case it decides to stop working after all these long years? Because in a sense the architecture of a place holds u...

I have plasterers in right now, and I had an electrician in yesterday redoing some sockets. Here’s a poem I wrote. Admittedly it wasn’t me doing the rewiring. But I also ask you - what other task can you make into a poem? Rewiring by Max Wallis First, you kill the switch. The whole house hums a final shiver then goes quiet. Somewhere, Alexa stops mid-speech. Second, you pull back plasterunravel an...

Today I want you to write nature into love poetry. Include dialogue between two people in a setting that talks about the environment. Use my poem Crowns, published by The Rialto in January as a framework: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe

Numbers often shape the contours of memory, myth, and identity. From the symbolic void of zero to the finality (or possibility) of ten, today's challenge is to explore what each digit holds for us personally, poetically, or philosophically. What do numbers mean to you ? Could "three" be a trio of childhood bedrooms, "seven" a lucky escape, or "zero" the moment you felt truly free? Write your own n...

Good morning everyone, I appreciate I’m behind on things! I’m between two houses and also organising renovation works which includes mending rotten joists beneath the floorboards in my front room, choosing carpets (or wood), and getting my new house dampproofed. Which led me to this prompt - What part of you would you change? And more importantly, what part would you not change, despite the trauma...

Today, write about the home. Whether that’s the home you’ve found, the home you’ve left, or the home you want. Write about the home as metaphor, or as bricks and mortar, or emotional. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe

Good morning everybody! So I won VERVE Poetry ’s June Poem of the Month with my poem Thinking of how many elevators As they say here: Our winning poem for Poem of the Month is Thinking of how many elevators by Max Wallis which was the most loud and unapologetic entry. Beginning with thinking about intimate opportunities in private spaces of public spaces, the poem stops itself mid judgmental-thoug...

In life, red flags seize our attention – warnings etched in sharp attitudes and uneasy behaviours. Green flags, their subtle opposites, quietly invite trust. Today, we'll write both into being, each reflecting the other. I want you to write a duet poem, or a mirror poem, where the first poem looks at red flags, and after the major break or volta, the poem twists to show the green flags that are pr...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Today is a quick one. Grab the nearest book to you, open to a random page and closing your eyes pick a random word. Do it again. Once you have seven words use them in a poem. I know it might sound silly but sometimes that’s all you need to start you off! T...

Today I want you to write an acrostic poem. This is a poem where the first letters of every line spell out a word. Choose a word or phrase that holds power for you—grief, survival, home, protest, tenderness, Aftershock itself. Perhaps lean into unconventional words: WHAT THEN? for example could be more interesting from an editor’s point of view than reading the word LOVE spelled vertically. Write...

It's Dr Anna Percy here with a prompt for the Daily Aftershock. I'm asking you to try and find a very large piece of paper which might for you mean A4 but if you have a large drawing pad preferably unlined, that would be a good piece of paper, or stick two pieces of paper together for this prompt. So I want you to think about a kissing gate, which is a kind of gate that exists in the countryside,...

Editorial Note by Max Wallis Michael Horovitz (1935–2021) Synagogue Music was one of Michael Horovitz’s most urgent and unflinching late poems; a lament and interrogation of inherited law, identity, and generational dissonance. The audio in this post is from a reading by his son Adam Horovitz live in Bermondsey in 2023, the poem now resonates with added force as both protest and elegy. With charac...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A litany is a form of poetic repetition often used in prayer or invocation. For today’s Aftershock prompt, you’re invited to write a litany for yourself … not in supplication, but in survival. A chant. A naming. A mantra of what you’ve endured, reclaimed,...

Today we are looking at folklore. Write a poem about the seventh child of a seventh child; a figure steeped in myth and mystery. Play with your lines. Write seven of them. Do they walk through storms unharmed? Do they rise in a shattered towerblock whern others don’t? Do birds fall silent when they speak? What is their inheritance? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other...

Editorial Note by Max Wallis - exclusive to Substack What do we inherit when a loved one dies? A silver spoon, a catchphrase, a question left unanswered. In A Scattered Set , Adam Horovitz offers a poignant triptych that spans memory, exile, intimacy, and the legacy of kinship, both personal and poetic. Written in memory of his father, the great poet Michael Horovitz, the triptych traces a physica...

Today, I invite you to write a villanelle, the poetic form that refuses to forget. With its pattern of repeating lines and tight rhyme, the villanelle lends itself to obsession, grief, survival, and transformation. A villanelle has 19 lines: * 5 tercets (three-line stanzas) * 1 quatrain (four-line stanza) * The first and third lines of the opening stanza return in a strict pattern throughout the p...

Hello everyone, I’ve got a chesty cough, or potentially a chest infection, and also dealing with the post-event fatigue that comes after I do things publicly these days. Events take such a toll on me. Not just the preparation, bearing my innards on stage, but also the relief when it goes well. But then there’s the travel and the sheer number of people I’m just not used to these days. Today, while...

There’s a great history of poets writing poems that declare they’re not poems. From Joyce Carol Oates’ THIS IS NOT A POEM published by the New Yorker: in which the poet discovers delicate white-parched bones of a small creature on a Great Lake shore or the desiccated remains of cruder roadkill beside the rushing highway. To Brian Bilston : Today write a poem that declares itself not a poem but bec...

Write a Found Poem using text messages, news headlines, or other words that are there already in real life all around you. Perhaps words in an anatomy textbook… Or a scrambled AI summary of a voicemail. Use the words you see around you as a scaffolding for your own poem. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershock...

What got you out of bed in the night to finally care for yourself? I say this with somewhat of a cough and possible chest infection. Sitting in my hotel room in Ludlow,and thinking about how for so long I was bedbound with PTSD and my parents did everything for me. And I'm still not perfectly well, but my point is that food can be such a great metaphor in poetry. You know what? I'm secretly wantin...

I’m travelling for our event in Ludlow tomorrow evening. Today I want you to think of a journey. Write it. Push it into fairytale. Where are you going? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe

Write a poem where every line transforms from the last, like water becoming steam, like wound becoming scar. Each line must carry over a word, an image, or a breath… but twist it, let it evolve. Let the last word of one line become the first spark of the next, not by repetition, but through transformation . Example: Let flame become hunger / hunger open the chest / chest echo with birdcall... Your...

Visual poetry uses a shape to speak. Today, that shape is a sash window: Two stacked rectangles. Four lines per pane. A form that holds stillness. A form that holds breath. When trauma makes the body want to jump or freeze, form can sometimes help us stay. Now, for some, the opposite is actually true. They find the freedom of no-form liberating at a time when perhaps freedom is most needed. But I...