Freewrite the blues

Here, an energetic exercise for kids by Maya Angelou (published by the Poetry Foundation), is adapted for people of all ages.

Read Langston Hughes’s poem, “Po’ Boy Blues” then brainstorm for five minutes about things that give you the blues. Freewrite for 15 minutes about one of them. (If you really want to get in the mood, have a little Muddy Waters playing in the background.) Choose one strand of your writing and expand on it and write a poem.

Whether you write them or not, poems can be helpful as writing prompts. Poems can be read in a relatively short amount of time, and they pack a lot of images per page. You might also find that the poem's rhythm and the compression of language will influence your writing in positive ways.