This is a technique introduced to me at a workshop at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference that I found interesting and effective. It is negative inversion. In this technique, you take an existing poem (yours or someone else’s) and flip (or reverse negatively) the nouns and verbs in each of the lines.

Take this example, from one of my poems.
Her whisper guided him along the banks
of the river where the rocks..

Flip the nouns and verbs negatively:
Her scream pushed him away, away from his embrace
across the room and beyond his walls,

or something similar. This is just a crude example. This is a technique of play and word manipulation. Try it out. You may get nonsense or it may take you somewhere you may never go on your own. Try it.

Because it didn’t post yesterday…

Prompt for the day: Take out a map. It could be a national map or a world map. It really doesn’t matter. Find a place on it where you have never visited, whether it be a city, lake or river. Write about someone returning to this destination after a long time away. What does it look like. Write about the journey.