The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)

Thank you, always, for the love you’ve shown this magazine. Every order means the world. 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 poem that’s made up from fragments of conversations. Use dialogue between voices in the poem. Let their dialogue show not tell. Then end th...

Thank you, always, for the love you’ve shown this magazine. Every order means the world. After yesterday’s stillness, today I want you to freewrite. Let language slip the leash. Let the mind spiral or stall or dissolve. Follow the strangeness. Let syntax fracture. Let one word lead to the next like stepping stones you haven’t tested for weight. Let memory interrupt. Let dissociation name itself. W...

If you’ve been meaning to order The Aftershock Review , now’s the moment. I’ll be doing one final post run tomorrow , but after that, I won’t be able to ship any for a week. So if you want your copy soon, grab it today: Thank you, always, for the love you’ve shown this magazine. Every order means the world. Today I want to talk about stillness. And actually, today’s writing prompt isn’t really a w...

What’s your lexicon? What’s your language? What’s your personal dictionary of survival? We all carry secret vocabularies, words that mean more to us than they do to others. Maybe tide means relapse. Maybe bees means danger. Maybe red jumper means the day someone you loved died. Today’s prompt is to write a personal lexicon poem. You can structure it as a list, a prose block, or a series of definit...

Editorial Note by Max Wallis For Those Who Wake in Fear doesn’t console, it steadies the reader. This is a poem for anyone who’s made it back from the dark. Joseph Fasano names the unspeakable with a featherlight touch: “You have felt it slip your heart / like a trembling wren.” That image alone could undo you. But the poem doesn’t stop there. It exhales. It reminds us that if we’ve “carried what...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

What Rises in You by Max Wallis for the days you don’t What rises in you, my body? Outside the window, May’s sun lifts again. But you do not. Breath returns only when it breaks: a gasp in jailed lungs, a throat packed with quiet. The clatter of builders, the hollow tick of a world that doesn’t wait. Everything has fallen, again. But less than yesterday. So stay. Name this hour. Slack light, before...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Editorial Note by Max Wallis Joseph Fasano is a poet of rare emotional clarity, each line carrying both weight and light. The Good News is a masterclass in quiet resurrection. With the gentlest touch, Fasano reorients suffering not as failure, but as evide...

Editorial Note by Max Wallis There are poems that circle a subject, and poems that walk straight into it. The ‘S’ word is a record of that moment, when someone says it out loud. Suicide. Not metaphor, not euphemism. And the shift it causes in the room, in the relationship, in the world. Mark Antony Owen captures the jolt of intimacy redefined: “I felt you as if new.” This poem doesn’t explain. It...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. Beneath every forest is a hidden network. Mycelium which...

Welcome to day 26 of the Daily Aftershock. Today I want you to know that embodiment can elevate your poetry beyond belief. What I mean by that, is the body is a language in itself and it remembers before the mind does. You can think of the body's betrayals and loyalties as powerful poetic ground. Did your hands stay still when you wanted to move them? Did your mouth open when it should have stayed...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. Me and Rhian Elizabeth had a funny chat on Instagram the...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Editorial Note by the Editor Some poems arrive with a hush around them. Others, like this one, carry a quiet weight that reverberates long after reading. Mark Antony Owen’s A suicide note is not metaphor. It was written with the real intent to be found. A...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....

Buy the book here: https://www.aftershockreview.com/product-page/issue-1-the-aftershock-review Listen to our Daily Aftershock Podcast here: https://aftershockpoetry.substack.com/s/the-daily-aftershock-writing-prompt A Note from the Editor: Here, we see how memory lands like a backfist. The Immovable Stance offers no neat redemption arc, only the weight of a father's words and the off-kilter balanc...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the magazine, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A Note from the Editor: Helen Ivory’s third poem in our inaugural issue Snow Globe holds a different kind of cold. Not the sharpness of winter, but the slow, creeping frost of neglect—the way intimacy can harden over time into something you don’t reco...

The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A Note from the Editor, exclusive to Substack: Helen Ivory’s second poem in Issue One of The Aftershock Review (£12.99 ) made me somersault at my desk. That Friday Afternoon accomplishes something extraordinary. It lingers in the way trauma does — how cert...

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt —a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair. Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again. The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication....