Marsh Hawk Press

Marsh Hawk Press

  • Home
  • Submissions and Prizes
    • 2025 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZES
    • Submissions–Books and Marsh Hawk Review
    • CONTEST JUDGES AND WINNERS
    • Submit Your Ms to the Contest
  • Latest News
  • MHP Review
  • Chapter One Series
  • Go to Chapter One Website
  • Who We Are / Contact Us
    • Who We Are
    • Contact Us

Mary Mackey: “Four Poetry Prompts”

1. Write a poem about the most dangerous thing you have ever done on purpose or unintentionally.

 2. Select an ordinary object (spoon, shoe, your own thumb, etc.) and stare at it intently for ten minutes without looking away. Write a poem about what you have seen. 

 3. Take one of your poems and reverse all the lines (last line first/first line last). Polish this new poem and consider if the result is worth saving.

 4. Using a pen and several pieces of paper (a computer won’t work for this), write as fast as you can for ten minutes. Don’t try to make sense or pay attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, or anything except writing. If you find yourself making sense, start the next sentence with the letter of the last word in the sentence that came before it. At some point you may feel that your hand is doing the writing and that you have no idea what you are saying or what you have said. At the ten-minute mark, stop. Do not write another word. Go back, read what you have written, and circle all the interesting phrases and metaphors. Can you put these together and make them into a poem if you now craft and polish them?  (Note: this technique is called “Automatic Writing.” It was frequently used by the French surrealist poets to free the imagination and get inspiration).

Marsh Hawk Press Artistic Advisory Board

Sandy McIntosh, Executive Editor and Publisher

Tony Trigilio, Managing Editor

Toi Derricotte
Denise Duhamel
Marilyn Hacker
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
David Lehman
Indigo Moor
Alicia Ostriker
Andrew Levy
Kim Shuck
Anne Waldman
John Yau

In Memory of David Shapiro, Gerald Stern, Marie Ponsot, Robert Creeley, Paul Pines, Allan Kornblum, Rochelle Ratner, Corinne Robins, Madeline Tiger, Claudia Carlson, and Harriet Zinnes. 

Join our Mailing List

Sign Up Now

For Email Newsletters you can trust.

 

Our titles are available for purchase by following the link on each title’s Book Store page. Book stores may order in bulk here.




Praise for Books

PAUL PINES: Charlotte Songs

The great themes—like Love, Death and Family— have inspired masterpieces and, alas, Hallmark Cards. In Charlotte Songs, Paul Pines celebrates his daughter. But, if you want the Hallmark Card version of fatherhood, you’ve come to the wrong place. Pines gives us the full paradox of living with his child as she grows from toddler to young woman. Inventive, humorous, baffling and poignant.

— Dalt Wonk
  • CONTEST JUDGES AND WINNERS

Copyright © 2025 · Marsh Hawk Press, Inc. All rights reserved | site: askmepc