Pen & Page Prompt #7

Poetry as conversation

Pen & Page: The Ongoing Exchange

Poems often begin in solitude, but they rarely stay there. Even when we think we’re writing in isolation, our lines carry echoes—of other writers, remembered places, or voices that press in from memory. A poem may lean toward a question, overhear a fragment of song, or pick up a conversation that was left unfinished.

This post’s theme, Poetry as Conversation, is an invitation to notice those echoes and lean into them. What happens when a poem listens as much as it speaks? When we treat the page not as a monologue but as a space where other presences, imagined, remembered, or real, can join us?

photo by Saeed Karimi

Today’s Pen & Page Prompt takes up this idea, encouraging you to write as though you are in dialogue with something beyond yourself. That “other” might be a poet whose words still hum in your ear, the landscape just outside your window, or even a version of yourself from another time. Sometimes the richest discoveries happen when we recognize the poem as part of an ongoing exchange. This week’s prompt is your invitation to step into that conversation.

Prompt #7: Answering the Voice

Think of your poem this week as an exchange. Begin by choosing a voice, presence, or influence outside yourself: it might be a poet you admire, a remembered place, a work of art, or even a version of yourself at another age. Write directly to that presence—or let it interrupt you.

As you write, listen for echo and overlap: where does your voice answer, resist, or lean into what’s been said (or left unsaid)? Let the poem take shape as a dialogue, not a declaration.

Deeper Layer: Allow the other “voice” to change your poem’s direction—what emerges when you yield the floor, even briefly?

Craft Extension: Try using refrains or interruptions (a repeated phrase, a sudden dash, a short italicized line) to mark the back-and-forth of conversation on the page.

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#Margin Notes: “Envelopes of Air,” Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz

In 2018, The New Yorker published an extraordinary poetic correspondence between Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz called “Envelopes of Air.” The project unfolded as an exchange of poems written back and forth, each poet responding to the other with tenderness, urgency, and astonishment.

Their poems circle themes of friendship, survival, and wonder in a shifting world—two distinct voices that remain utterly themselves while also entering a shared current. What emerges is a record of poetry not as monologue but as living dialogue, proof of how language can hold space between people across distance and difference.

I will take a piece of this world and call it / my own. I will name it after you.
Ada Limón
I am learning to live in the dark. I am learning to be the dark. I am learning the dark. Natalie Diaz

Prompt Extension: Your Own “Envelopes of Air”

Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz’s Envelopes of Air began as an exchange, each poem sent across the distance, each reply carrying on the thread. For your own correspondence, try beginning a similar dialogue:

1. Choose a correspondent. This could be a fellow poet, a friend, a mentor (living or gone), or even an imagined “other.”

2. Write the first envelope. A poem that opens the exchange. Don’t over-narrate, simply set something in motion: an image, a question, a confession.

3. Invite a response. If you’re working with someone, send it. If not, write a “reply” yourself. Step into another voice and answer back.

4. Notice the shifts. What changes in tone, imagery, or rhythm when one voice answers another?

Just as Limón and Diaz discovered, the act of writing in exchange can open new currents of thought and feeling. Whether your “envelope” travels to another poet, to a place, or to a different version of yourself, the important thing is that it returns carrying something unexpected.

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Poetry thrives in conversation—between voices, between pages, between readers and writers. That exchange is what keeps this space alive week after week.

If you’ve enjoyed this week’s post, know that there’s much more waiting inside the paid subscription—columns that dig deeper into craft, explorations of poets and books, and an exclusive image-based prompt to keep your writing flowing. Joining helps sustain the work here and opens more doors for your own practice.

Write and thrive,
Robbin

P.S. Fall River Heron Review workshops are now open for registration—new ones and returning favorites—and this week they’re 10% off. If you’ve been thinking of supporting your writing with a class, now’s a good time to grab your spot.