Welcome to your monthly poetry writing exercises, written by Kylie Thompson, and inspired by The Exclusion Zone by Shastra Deo (UQP 2023).
Kylie Thompson (she/her) is a street press and creative writer based in Queensland. Shortlisted for the 2020 Thomas Shapcott Prize, Kylie’s poetry appears in Cordite’s ‘Chewing on a Ruby Passport’, on Instagram as @wildkatpoetry and in an upcoming anthology from Unravelling Cryptid Press.
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. She holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts in Writing and English Literature, First Class Honours and a University Medal in Creative Writing, a Master of Arts in Writing, Editing and Publishing, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing from The University of Queensland. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.
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Poetry writing prompts:
Write a suite of poems in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, creating opportunities for the reader to navigate different narratives or themes depending on what path they take. Bonus points if you include more than 2 potential paths.
In honour of Shastra Deo’s ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ suite of poems, try to incorporate an unexpected element of popular culture into a poem.
In ‘Fukushima Soil’, Shastra begins the poem with “For most of my life I've been right about omens.” so either:
Write about something you're almost always right (or wrong) about, or
Write about the omens you watch for within your life and why they’re important, or
Write about a time you ignored an omen, and the consequences of that choice.
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