Today’s prompt comes to us from Lillian Hallberg. She challenges us to write a “book spine” poem. This involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. If you want to take things a step further, Lillian suggests gathering a list of titles from your shelves (every third or fifth book, perhaps, if you have a lot) and using the titles, as close to the originals as possible, to create a poem that is seeded throughout with your own lines, interjections, and thoughts. Happy writing!

Thought I was stuck again as I am away from home and my own books. However, I solved the problem by taking a few titles from my Kindle library.

Spinechiller

Secrets of the sea house –
sacred country, sea of ink.
Elizabeth is missing:
island wife out stealing horses.

The shock of the fall
arriving at your own door:
sunset song in another light,
burial rites then life after life.

 

I have added little to the book titles but I did shuffle the order round to get a kind of story!