When I restart the creative writing class this September I will be joining the advanced group. The first session will be on prose poetry in preparation for those that want to enter a poem for National Poetry Day, Thursday 3 October 2019. The theme this year will be Truth, appropriate I think in what has been called our post-truth age. I’m not that interested in writing poetry although I read and admire the work of some poets. However, I’m tempted by prose poetry as I think the discipline and techniques are invaluable for prose writing generally. The following link is to an article that defines it and gives some useful examples.
This is another useful link that makes some of the same points The Prose Poem
What is a prose poem? According to the Academy of American Poets, the form is traced to the French symbolist poets of the nineteenth century. The prose poem is a popular form of modern and contemporary poetry, composed in prose, not verse. Though it is composed in prose, it reads like poetry. To construct the poem, the poet puts into use the same poetic devices as those worked with to craft modern and contemporary poetry, such as free verse, and traditional poetry, such as the epic or blank verse poem.
