The challenge this week is to
write a poem about a place from literature that you’ve never seen. The place
may be real or imaginary, filled with real or imaginary details, and peopled
with made-up or actual persons. The goal is explore the significance and
possibilities of place in a poem.
The only requirement is that
you must write about a location that’s highlighted in a literary work and, if
it’s an actual place, it must be one you’ve never visited.
Guidelines:
1. Write about any famous
literary location that never existed in reality (Lilliput, Wonderland, Avalon,
Camelot).
2. Based on a work of
literature such as “The Idylls of the King” by Tennyson, you might want to
place yourself in a different historical period. For example, you might want to
write about medieval times. You can include a castle, knights, peasants, and
then get into the nitty gritty of what life was really like back then: no indoor bathrooms, no running water, no
wash-and-wear fabrics, no washing machines, more serfs than aristocrats, no
easy means of long distance communication, etc.
3. After choosing an actual literary place to write about,
research that place online or perhaps even use Google Maps.
4. Using the text of a myth or
legend (may be found online), write about a mythological or legendary place
(i.e. Valhalla, Asphodel Meadows, Elysian Fields, Mount Olympus, Tír na nÓg).
5. Write about places such as
James Joyce’s Dublin; Anne of Green Gable’s Prince Edward Island; or Florence,
Italy (the setting for E.M.
Forster's A Room with a View and
Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady).
6. Here are some more literary
locations that you might consider “visiting” in your poem:
Atlantis (noted in Plato’s writings, an island with an advanced
civilization that was lost in preclassical times and never found.
Camelot (cited in various works of literature as the place of King
Arthur’s court).
El Dorado (from Spanish legend, the name of a Native American
chieftain and the city and city he ruled; a metaphor personal fulfillment).
Faerie (from various European fairy tales and folktales, the
magical realm of fairies and related “beings”).
Gotham City (the home of batman).
Hogsmeade Village (from the Harry Potter novels, inhabited
exclusively by magical beings).
Middlemarch (the setting from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, a fictional town in 19th century England).
Neverland (from J. M. Barrie’s Peter
Pan, an idyllic land that serve as a metaphor for escapist thinking and
eternal childhood).
Shambhala (a mythical and ideal hidden kingdom in Central Asia).
Shangri-La (a paradise from James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon).
Utopia (from Sir Thomas More’s allegorical novel Utopia about an idealized society).
Xanadu (from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” an
idealized place of lavish grandeur).
Tips:
1. Be sure to identify the
literary work that inspired your place poem. You may do this in the title,
subtitle, within the poem, or in a note at the end of the poem.
2. Treat the place you’re writing
about as if it were a “main character” in your poem.
3. Write about what the place
means to you (and what it might mean to others).
4. Think about how your literary
location might be a metaphor for something else.
5. What might this location teach
you and your readers?
6. What theme and universal truth
does your chosen literary location hold?
7. Avoid clichés and hackneyed
expressions in describing the place you’ve chosen.
8. Think and write about the
significance of place.
Examples:
For a comprehensive list of poems about places visit
