Em Strang writes:
I’d like to invite you to write a praise poem (or prose piece) to an animal, real or imagined. It could be a poem to yourself (as human animal) or to a pet or to a favourite wild animal, or indeed to an imaginary creature.
Lucille Clifton’s Homage to my Hips is a brilliant praise poem (albeit not to an animal), and so if you like you could draw inspiration from this.
What form would you like to write your praise piece in? Perhaps
- a poem of couplets
- a long, narrative poem
- a stream of consciousness piece of prose
- a list
All forms are allowed!
If you fancy a more structured prompt, try this.
Write a three-line praise poem to an animal in the following format:
Name of animal
Some physical aspect you love about it
Why and/or what it teaches you
For example,
Horse, your muscle is my muscle,
you teach me how to run
and how, when it rains, to stand still.
May 2020
Em Strang’s website
“Up Close” by warren hanratty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0