The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)

Write a poem that turns in the middle. Line 6 is the hinge. Everything before it leans one way; everything after swings the other. Use repetition, contradiction, or an actual word hinge (e.g. “but,” “still,” “then”). Often we use the end of a line to do this, too. It’s a definite choice. A moment of pause. A moment to catch the reader’s assumptions of what might come next. This is a public episode...

The Language of X What if grief had a dialect? Or joy a grammar? Choose an abstract or emotional concept, grief, lust, silence, survival, and imagine it has its own language. Write a poem in the “language of X.” Let syntax, rhythm, and metaphor reflect what that feeling knows. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afte...

Today I want you to write a post-script to another poem of yours, or to a person who you won’t name. What wasn’t said? What was left out of the email? What never made it into the goodbye? Sometimes, survival isn’t a declaration. It’s an afterthought that grows louder with time. Let it be your footnote to the past. Your quiet rebellion. Your breath after the door closed. This is a public episode. I...

Today I want you to take a poem you’ve already written, and redact, blackout or erase sections so that you create a new one. Try and create a shadow poem, that shows another meaning that’s still linked to the one before it. If you’re reading this on the website you can read two versions of the same poem below by me. They’re called Different Versions of the Same Thing and were published in the Cour...

If you could write the final sentence in a book, what would you say? I think we’ve all had this idea floating in our heads… What’s the final sentence that leaves a trace? Build outward from that imagined closure. 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

Use the language of food, preparation, and method to re-enter a pivotal moment. Let metaphor take over. 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

Our Mission at The Aftershock Review Why not publish every poem? Why hold trauma writing to such high standards? Here’s why. The Aftershock Review exists to champion the most urgent, skilful, and courageous writing being made in the wake of trauma, not as therapy, but as literature. We are proud to be funded by Arts Council England, supported by Crowdfunders, private donors, and a growing communit...

Each letter becomes a portal. Use initials, nicknames, chosen names… what does your name remember? 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

September 11 by Joseph Fasano They woke not knowing. They kissed their children goodbye in the morning dark, left a note under the roses on the table. (I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it later.) Say it: They did not know they would hold hands with strangers and have to choose nothing over fire. They did not know they would have no other winters. Listen. History is human hands, a strand of hair still s...

Let resistance and contradiction shape the logic of the piece. 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

Let the bent spoon, the weather, the camera, the car, or the hospital bed say sorry. What would it mean? 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

Today write a list poem or prose poem about who or what haunts you. Make them a cast of characters. Where do they live? 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

A Note from the Editor, Max Wallis In How Our Love Ends , Joseph Fasano brings his characteristically cinematic lyricism to bear on the quiet catastrophe of parting. Here, love’s dissolution is neither rupture nor drama, but a final, tender surrender. A red dress. A blue suit. A single silent touch in the kitchen. Fasano sketches the end of a shared life not through argument or betrayal but throug...

Explore the comfort of necessary illusions… something you told yourself to survive, even if it wasn’t true. Read more below: 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

This Pride we’re spotlighting some of the queer poets from The Aftershock Review: Issue One. We’re starting with Dale Booton (@dale.booton). Dale’s poem Wide Awake doesn’t soothe. It stings. “I chew the night’s garnish/squelch questions like lemon around my teeth/until the bitterness seeps into split gums” This is what aftermath looks like when you keep going. When the city frays. When love and pa...

Dear Daily Aftershock readers and podcast listeners, the next week of prompts will be short ones as I deal with other Aftershock work and stuff in my personal life. Today I want you to write a poem based on a rule you broke, and what it gave you. This could be literal, like breaking Lockdown in search of friends or family or company. Or it could be emotional: letting someone new love you, when you...

It’s Dr. Anna Percy here with Day 49 of the Daily Aftershock and a brand new prompt for you. You may have heard of the form cento in poetry. Traditionally, you borrow a line from a different poet for each line. But today, I’d like you to make a self cento, a cento made entirely from your own words. Use your own poetry, notebooks, text messages, Facebook statuses, Instagram captions, even a bit of...

Today consider this poem by Linda Gregg: NEW YORK ADDRESS The sun had just gone outand I was walking three miles to get home. I wanted to die. I couldn’t think of words and I had no futureand I was coming down hard on everything. My walk was terrible. I didn’t seem to have a heart at alland my whole past seemed filled up. So I started answering all the questions regardless of consequence: Yes I ha...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Today, I want you to write a psalm to your body. Not a perfect body. Not a past body. The body you’re in today. This isn’t about gratitude, unless it is. It doesn’t have to be healing. Or loving. Or soft. It just has to be yours. Write like your body is li...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. It’s Dr Anna Percy here with your prompt for Day 46 of the Daily Aftershock. You may have heard of an ekphrastic poem, a poem written in response to a work of art. The most famous example is John Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn. But ekphrasis isn’t limited to...

Today I want you to lean into surrealism. Write the moment the laws of your personal gravity shift, even slightly. What tilts? What floats up or out of reach? What pulls you back? Does your kettle float to the ceiling mid-boil? Do memories begin drifting up like balloons you forgot to tie down? Does your body fall sideways through the hallway mirror? Does your name slide off your chest and land wi...

Write about the part of your body that remembers the most. Is it your shoulders, always bracing? Your stomach, tightening before bad news? Your hands, still remembering someone else’s? Zoom in. Let this body part speak. What textures does it crave or fear? What does it hold, hide, rehearse? How has it changed over time? Don’t describe the body in general. Choose one specific part and stay with it....

Daily Aftershock #43 – A Disappeared Object with Dr Anna Percy It’s Dr Anna Percy and I’m here with another prompt. I’d like you to think about an item, a product, or a piece of equipment that you used to use all the time, or that you saw someone else use all the time, but that no longer exists, or you can’t get it where you live. It might be something like what I was thinking about: the brand Spe...

Write about an object you can’t throw away. Maybe it’s useless now. Maybe it’s chipped, faded, hidden in a drawer. But it remains. A breadcrumb from a past version of you. A witness. Describe it in full: texture, smell, temperature, where you keep it, what it refuses to let go of. Don’t name the emotion. Let the object carry it. Examples: The cinema ticket folded four times in the back of a notebo...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. That’s one of the quiet, enduring magics of writing. The more precise the detail, the more it hums with life. And the more it hums, the more it echoes. Not: a cup of tea on a grey morning. But: the chipped Manchester United mug your old friend left behind,...