07:30 Prompts on Tuesday

When you see a list of prompts and are thinking, "Is there a story here?" don't just read quickly thorugh and think, "Huh?"

Instead live in the prompts. Read them all, let them interact, then read them again, savour the comparisons and contrasts, read from the bottom upwards, read out loud, stare at lines that "hum" for you.

I'm sincere in believing that everybody can get a story from a list of 10-20 prompts if they just allow them in.

And don't think prompts only lead to small, inconsequential stories. treat them with respect, allow them inside your head (and heart) and they are as powerful, possibly MORE powerful, than life itself.

Why MORE powerful?

Because they shake the tree, they come at you, disturb, fire up the unexpected connections. They reach the unconscious and start to ring bells, open doors, slam them, run around. But you have to open your legs.



PROMPTS

An airless dusk before thunder, a man running
Eye-drops
White bees hiss in the coral skull
Snow-drops
The radio is playing downstairs in the kitchen
Pear-drops
A gap in history closes, like a cloud
Chocolate-drops
Far from a childhood of rivers
Drips
We came to unexpected latitudes
Pangs
The Duke of Common Interest
Pong
There is no such thing as a routine death
Ching!
When a sugar-ship sinks, is the sea sweet?
Alchemy
I am standing in the stone-flagged kitchen
Infamy
On a Sunday afternoon after the trams used to run
Jewel
They met in cafes. She was always early
Tevez
Look down you said, this was once a famine road
Tommy Cooper's Fez
The clock say eight, the light says winter
Reading Dante
The clamour of the nest
The poem reads the man
I opened the pantry door and a river flowed out
Why girls aren't
Not an inch of him was free
Pariah
They were married in a place called Crinkle
Lolly
The mourners at the divorce