Writing prompts and exercises can be the perfect way to move your writing project forward. Some of our members have shared their favourite writing prompts to spark your creativity.

Go outside. Sit on your front step, or your back step, or go somewhere you can get to in under 20 minutes. A bench in a park is a great location. Commit to staying there at least one hour, preferably two. Take a notebook or a laptop and sit. Write slowly, one thought or observation at a time. Include detail. Don’t say a bird, say a robin. Say “a man in a shirt the colour of sidewalk after a rain.” Observe. Feel. Make notes. Repeat. Preferably every day. Preferably at the same hour. Preferably for at least a week.

About Michelle Poirier Brown:

Michelle Poirier Brown is an internationally published poet and performer, currently living on the traditional unceeded territories of the syilx peoples, in Vernon, BC. She is nêhiyaw-iskwêw and a citizen of the Métis Nation. Her poem “Wake” won PRISM international’s Earle Birney Prize in 2019. The song cycle, “The Length of a Day” (Jeffrey Ryan, composer), premiered in 2021. Her work has appeared in Arc, CV2, The Greensboro Review, Grain, Emrys Journal, Vallum, and several anthologies. A feminist activist, Michelle won a landmark human rights case establishing reasonable accommodation in the workplace for breastfeeding women. Retired from careers as a speech writer, conflict analyst, and federal treaty negotiator, she now writes full-time, enjoys the produce of her permaculture garden, and has taken up birdwatching.

Michelle's debut book of poetry You Might Be Sorry You Read This was published this year by University of Alberta Press in the Robert Kroetsch Series and is available for purchase through your local bookstore. More details: https://michellepoirierbrown.ca/you-might-be-sorry-you-read-this/

Her chapbook Intimacies was accepted for publication by Jack Pine Press and will be launched in Saskatoon on October 7. 

For more about Michelle and her work click here.