My Poetry Diary

is not the same as my desk diary;
it doesn’t contain appointments,
birthdays and other mundane things.

It’s a diving board to a sea of ideas,
in which I can swim any stroke I want.

I can float, deep dive, tread water
while I watch clouds pass by or
tickle a dolphin. It’s a joy to explore!

It’s a companion to bounce off beach
balls of ideas, a reminder of sand
between the toes and wave susurration.

Prompts pop up, flying fish to catch
without a net, and words I’d like to play
with, like ‘doughty’: soft and squidgy,
a bread roll full of fearless resolution.  

A doughty poet. That’s what I strive to be,
assisted by my companion, a diary for poetry.

Kim M. Russell, 25th April 2026

Image by Marcos Paolo Prado on Unsplash

It’s the final Saturday and Day 25 of NaPoWriMo, and the optional prompt is inspired by Melissa Kwasny’s poem ‘The Apple Tree in Blossom’, in which she “strings together fantastical metaphors for the apple tree before shifting into exclamations, definitions, and a series of nimble, tonal shifts – and seeming changes in topic – before circling around back to the apple tree.”

We are writing poems in which we must use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which we opened our poems.

Also linked to the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night on 4th June 2026.

39 thoughts on “My Poetry Diary”

  1. ‘doughty’: soft and squidgy,
    a bread roll full of fearless resolution.  – enjoyed that!!! This prompt reminded me of the Hannah Gosselin boomerang metaphor form and I ended up writing a boomerang poem. I remember doing several prompts on PU ages ago which introduced the form to me!

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  2. Love this, Kim! I also have a poetry diary full of prompts and poems. It’s got me writing reams and I love it.

    “It’s a diving board to a sea of ideas,
    in which I can swim any stroke I want.” – Yup!

    🙂

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  4. A doughty poet indeed, Kim, and a joyful one. Especially with the ecstatic use of imagery which in this poem the extended metaphor is not only delightful but absolutely brilliant. Loved this poem. ❤️

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  12. I do carry a little black pocket book which I still prefer sometimes, to my phone notes, and it has received everything from poems to anwers I need to convey form the factory floor back to my office desk…

    I love this

    Prompts pop up, flying fish to catch
    without a net, and words I’d like to play
    with, like ‘doughty’: soft and squidgy,
    a bread roll full of fearless resolution.  

    (are we poets not all playing in the sandpit of words?)

    Liked by 1 person

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