Welcome to Day 24 – and we're entering the final week! Today's prompt is an idea of what to write about: a recipe for... something. This can be a recipe for a dish you adore complete with instructions for how to take the same delight in it that you do. Or it might be detailed instructions of how to make something exactly as dreadfully as you once did. (I'm still haunted by my accidental "cat-food and marsh-greens pasta" in 2002.)
Alternately, if food doesn't grab your fancy today, you could write a recipe for something else. The obvious options that spring to mind are a recipe for life, for love, for success, for happiness... I suggest though, that instead you choose something completely different, that surprises both you and the reader. Jump into this random noun generator and from the list of 10 things it gives you, choose one to write a recipe for.
And if you'd like a type of poem to write, how about a terza rima? A terza rima has three-line stanzas which use ‘chain’ rhyme: aba, bcb, cdc, and so on. (The ‘chain’ is how the middle rhyme sets the rhyme for the next stanza.) You can have as many stanzas as you like following that pattern, which makes it very helpfully flexible. At the end, you can finish either with a single line using the last middle rhyme (eg. aba, bcb, cdcd) or with a rhyming couplet using the last middle rhyme (eg. aba, bcb, cdc dd)
Here's an example I wrote of both a recipe poem and terza rima:
How to cook panch phoran aloo
Begin in bed: you’re lying naked. Skim
the restless crisps of ‘Lifestyle’, settle in
to Rayner’s lustful prose and while a dim
idea of breakfast’s building (and of sin),
potatoes creep across your phone. Just read,
relaxed. That’s dinner food. That golden skin
of crusted cubes and half-charred flakes… a bead
of sweat between your breasts, the coffee old…
there’s love, and there’s potatoes. Fierce with need,
you’ll leap and gather spices, early cold
against your soles: nigella, fenugreek,
black mustard, cumin, fennel, drifts of gold
and white, of turmeric and salt; the sleek
satin under peels; the oils rise,
mirage above the pan, the rustling squeak
of pestle grinding mortar (filthy smirk).
You’ll sway, inhaling aromatic dust,
and though for dinner, one might count this work,
this morning’s raw with pleasure. Cover: trust
they’ll cook, untouched, and heat two discs of bread
like duvets for potatoes’ chilli lust,
and finish where you started: bare, in bed.
Have fun!
The Meddling with Poetry course explores a host of different poetry forms as well as the musicality of language, poetic imagery, and other aspects of the poetic. It's 8 weeks long, one evening a week, and absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.
