Pen & Page Prompt #12
This Week: No Passport Needed
Pen & Page: The Landscapes of Your Imagination
Landscape is more than scenery; it’s a way the world speaks to us and through us. Travel, whether across a county line or in the imagination, sharpens that conversation, asking us to notice what changes when we move and what we carry that refuses to. A postcard, a map, a brief message to a friend: these are small bridges between places and people, gestures that say, “I am here, and I thought of you.” This week, write with one eye on the horizon and one on the human impulse to share—how we name, orient, and send. Let place shape your diction, let movement set the rhythm, and let address (to you, to a stranger, to the future) invite the reader in. The goal: to let landscape, travel, and communication braid into a single current that carries the poem forward.
Prompt #12: Postcards From Places You Haven’t Been
Core Prompt
Premise: A postcard is a promise and a fiction: a whole life shrunk to a square of sky and a few urgent lines. Let imagination stamp it and send it on its way.
Prompt: Write a series of short postcard-poems from places you’ve never visited (geographic or imagined). Each card should contain, among other lines, one vivid detail, one action, and one line you’d only write if you were far from home.
Craft Menu
Specific place-nouns (tram, seawall, ticket booth)
Time-stamps (dawn ferry, after-market dusk)
One precise motion per card (tilt, pocket, bike)
Closing sign-off that shifts tone
Shape Options
Three postcards, 5–7 lines each
One long poem split by “Wish you were here” refrains
A grid of four+ microcards (3–4 lines each)
Constraints & Twists
Avoid abstract nouns for the first two cards
Include one “impossible” place (a city under snowfall in July)
Quick Version
Draft two postcards: one to a stranger, one to yourself.
Stretch / Expansion
Add a final “returned to sender” card that answers an earlier one.
Share Back
Share your favorite postcard in the comments with the favorite phrase underlined.
Reflection
What did distance let you say that closeness would have softened or silenced?
As you wrap this week’s work, notice what the page revealed when you let place, movement, and the urge to share do the guiding. Keep a few lines you love on hand, on a card, or your phone and listen for what they ask you to add, cut, or rearrange over the next day or two. A poem is a journey-in-progress; give it time to arrive.
Coming Next Week: Frame & Phrase — Collaborative Poetry
Next week’s Frame & Phrase post will explore collaborative poetry, a practice I’m increasingly excited about, and one that’s drawing wider interest. We’ll look at quick-start approaches (call-and-response couplets, renga-style chains, “exquisite corpse” variations, and live Google Doc exchanges), plus etiquette and craft (listening for your partner’s music, leaving room, building toward a shared turn). Collaboration invites play and surprise, strengthens revision muscles, and widens the voice: you learn what your lines can do inside someone else’s cadence and what theirs can do inside yours.
If you’d like the full post including examples, mini-templates, and prompts to try with a partner, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps me carve out the time to make these deeper dives, and it gets you access to the complete Frame & Phrase series and other extras.
See you next Thursday. November, already!
Write and thrive,
Robbin
A few years ago, I had an impulse to draw squares and fit my poems inside them, giving myself a spatial constraint. It worked so well! I wrote a 7-poem sequence which made us way into my manuscript. I SO appreciate this prompt and will draw even smaller squares to give postcards a try. Thanks for all your thoughtful prompts!
Love this