"Over the years I've been lucky enough to be invited into hundreds of schools, libraries and other writing venues to read my poems and get other people writing theirs.  The ideas below are some of the ones I've used with children and adults which seem to have been both enjoyable to attempt and also to produce a worthwhile poem at the end.  I have tried to write them so that anyone could have a go - if you can read what I have written then you shouldn't need anything else but pen, paper and your imagination!  If you're a parent or  teacher (or both!) reading this, then feel free to use these ideas with your children.  Good luck and good writing" - David

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1. My Private Paintbox

Before you write anything, spend some time thinking of a range of colours and for each one think of things you know that are each of these colours. Now use the above title and write a poem featuring a different colour in every line. Begin each line with, ‘My’, followed by one particular colour and one or two items you’ve thought of which are that colour. So Victoria wrote:

My red is an apple
My white is clean teeth 

and ended: My gold is ten new pennies. 

While Laura started:

My red is strawberries and tomato sauce
My white is snow and ice cream 

and finished: And my gold is my trophies
and the pound coins in my pockets. 

2. Daft Days, Mad Months

We all love playing with the sounds of a language. Well here you do just that. You’ll make poems which are 7 or 12 lines long, depending on whether you choose to bring the days of the week or the months of the year to wild alliterative life to create lines such as: 

Marvellous Monday made a model of a monster out of his mum’s marmalade.                       

                        or                    Jolly January juggled a jumper and jumped for joy. 

If you create all 12 mad months you can go on to make a poetry calendar for yourself or as a present for someone else. Don’t forget to get a dictionary for your word-hunting. 

 3. Personal Column

You’ll definitely need a dictionary for this activity! First write the alphabet down the middle of a sheet of paper. The task then is to think of and seek out 26 adjectives, each beginning with a different letter, which you feel appropriate to you. So, for example, you might be  Argumentative/Bossy/Cool through to, say, eXcitable/Young/Zany. Or you may want to make 13 unrhymed two-word couplets by being, Amazingly Beautiful/Craftily Daring, etc. Or you might discover, once you start, a form of your own to complete. Whatever you do, don’t be shy about yourself!  

4. Opposites

Words that mean the same are called synonyms; words with opposite meanings are antonyms. Here you need to think of some antonyms which are also adjectives, eg ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. Each line of your poem will have these two adjectives plus an object (or noun) that fits, eg Hot day, cold ice cream. Your poem will be just as long as the pairs of adjectives you can come up with. Here’s what Robert (age 6) did:

Hot bottom, cold skin.
Slow snail, fast car.
Bright sun, dark sleep.
Small boy, big world.  

5. If

That’s the (very short!) title and the poems are in the form of unrhymed couplets. Write a sequence of first lines/half sentences such as in the example below and think of your own completions: if you were each of these things, what would you do? How would it feel? Where would you go? Here’s Adam’s poem: 

If I become the sun
I’ll melt your ice cream. 

If I become the moon
You could come and see me. 

If I become a comet
I will race round the world. 

If I become a star
I will let you wish on me. 

If I become the sky
I’ll be blue for ever. 

Instead of the outer space theme you could try some elements of the weather. 

6.      My Magic Carpet 

There’s your title – now imagine you’re on it and you will fly to some very different places, each of which will make one line of your poem. You might go to see animals in the wild, the bottom of the ocean, family or friends far away; you can travel through outer space or even time. A poem can make anything happen! Why not finish with a line describing what you want to do as soon as you’re back home again? You may be so tired you just want your (un-flying) bed! 

Here’s a way to have fun with rhyme. I’ve chosen animals as the subject because their names make such good rhyming material. Begin each line with the word, ‘Imagine’ and the form of each line is then: ‘Imagine’ + animal + rhyme, to create completed lines such as, 

Imagine a bear with bright purple hair.
Imagine an octopus shaking hands with all of us.
Imagine a zebra who went on getting cleverer. 

If you want, you can create an Amazing Animal Alphabet. All you need to start with are those 26 creatures – I’ll offer you the Unicorn and the  X-ray fish for two tricky letters – now see what you can come up with.

8. Off With Its Head!

Here’s an idea for making riddles. Look through your dictionary for some words which, when you remove their first letter (or chop their heads off), leaves a fresh word. So ‘open’ becomes ‘pen’, ‘close’ becomes ‘lose’. The idea is for others to guess your two words from the riddle. So from that first example your riddle might go:

Start with what you do to a door
and end with the writer’s tool.
Sometimes these poems are called Beheadings. Can you guess these:

Behead a strong wind
and find you’re not first. 

Behead what’s not mine
and find what belongs to us all. 

9. Simple Similes

What do you think of when I say ‘Blackpool’ or ‘Top of the Pops’ or ‘The North Pole’? Whatever you think of for these – and any other subjects, can be shaped into a poem like this: 

Like Blackpool without its tower
Like Top of the Pops with no Number 1
Like The North Pole with no blizzards 

You can finish with the line, ‘Like me without’ and whatever item you think fits you best. 

10. Big Fibs

I know we shouldn’t tell lies but they make great material for a poem! This is a fun activity for a group to try. Each member suggests a subject and everyone writes a ‘big fib’ about it. In this example Laura, Becky and Vicky compared ideas and kept what they liked best for a group-poem: 

Sweets are disgusting.
My brother is a Martian.
A dog grows ears on its bottom.
My dad is a big lizard.
My school is a rubbish dump.
I hate fashion
I have flowers growing from my hair.

11. My Magic Paintbrush 

Imagine you have such a thing - and whatever you paint with it will become real. You can paint something for yourself, but only after you’ve painted what your friends and family – and maybe your pets and bedroom and whatever else you choose – might like. Here’s what Daniel would paint;                                   

I will draw a dishwasher that also dries
and puts them back.
For my dad a tv that always has football on.
For my sister a machine that will make her eat up.
For me a behaving machine.
For my nan a lifetime supply of anything. 

 12. Colour Riddles 

Choose a colour and then some things that are that colour. The idea is to write a short description of each thing so that your reader can guess what each is. Say you choose green. Begin each line, This green and then add your description. Can you guess these greens? 

This green began as a black dot. 
This green likes 22 players.
This green lets you go down the road 
and this green will turn brown. 

13. Invisible! 

Wouldn’t it be great if you were? Well some of the time, anyway. Just write a poem telling what you’d like to do if no-one could see you. Here’s Lloyd’s: 

If I was invisible                       
I would hide in a tree                        
all day and all night.

We have a wa-wa-wa-ing baby                        
and I would hide from it                        
till next day. 

14. When… 

You can start lots of poems with this word. Here’s just one idea to get you a poem about the weather. Simply write a sequence of lines beginning, ‘When it’s rainy/When it’s windy/When it’s stormy/When it’s foggy/When it’s sunny’. Plus any other weathers you can think of! Finish each line in any way you choose: say what you do or what different animals do, or what you see. Try the idea more than once with different line endings and keep the version you like best. 

15. A Lullaby 

There’s a really well known one that begins: 

Hush little baby, don’t say a word,                        
mama’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. 

And if that mocking bird don’t sing
mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. 

Just make up as many new rhymes as you can to create a fresh lullaby. I’ve written some that I called ‘Lullaby for Modern Mamas’ which you can find in my book, ‘Body Noises’. Here are some written amazingly quickly by some children in Kelsall Primary School: 

Hush little baby, don’t you whine,
mama’s gonna get you a ball of twine. 

And if that ball of twine don’t do
mama’s gonna get you a brand new shoe. 

And if that brand new shoe won’t fit
mama’s gonna get you a fine sand pit. 

And if that sand pit’s just too small
mama’s gonna pay for a brand new ball. 

And if that ball should one day pop
mama’s gonna buy you the whole of the shop. 

And if the whole shop still won’t do
Well that’s all your mama can do for you.

16. Sensing the Seasons

You can write about one season or all four. Choose one to start with and think hard about how each of your five senses recognises that season. If you choose, for example, winter, you can write a five line verse like this:

Winter smells of……
Winter looks like……
Winter sounds like……
Winter’s touch is……
Winter tastes of……

17. Magic Senses 

Here you can write five unrhymed couplets, one for each sense. In the first line of each couplet you say one thing you know you taste, see, smell, hear, touch all the time. In the second line you say what you’d like to taste, etc. if you had magic senses. As an example here is how Pavin begins his poem: 

With my everyday eye I see my school friends.  
With my magic eye I watch a football game on Mars. 

With my ordinary nose I smell my tea.                        
With my magic nose I can sneeze louder than a jet engine. 

18. A Poem for my Enemies

Write a short list of different things you really like: for example, a food, a time of day, a pop group, etc. Now write a list of opposites: the things you really dislike. Begin the first list ‘I am’ and the second list ‘You are’. Here’s Philip’s; he calls it ‘From Me To You’: 

I am

scrambled egg

snow

a snake

shandy

Blackpool

Manchester United

You are

sprouts

thunder

a mosquito

red wine

Asda all day
fur clothes

19. Hot, Hotter, Hottest 

Brainstorm some things you know are hot: fire, toast, a car engine, you in summer. Now write 3 beginnings to lines: ‘Hot is…/Hotter is…/Hottest is…’ and end each with one or two items from your brainstormed list. Write a bit more about the items you choose if you can. Once he’d tried the idea Craig went on to try ‘Cold’: 

Cold is my hands when I come to school.
Cold is a penguin’s belly. 

Colder is an ice lolly.
Colder is a cold bath. 

Coldest is the Antarctic in winter.
Coldest is the Mersey water. 

20. It’s My Loaf!

On a sheet of paper make a list of your favourite things. Keep it varied - a weather, a place, day of the year – till you have a dozen or more.  Write the list down the paper leaving a line space between each item. When you’ve finished just write the word ‘BREAD’ once on each of the lines you’d left empty. You’ve now got your own sliced life – good for reading out loud, especially if you can get some friends to chant ‘Bread!’ between your lines.