LIONS LIKE US
by Hollie Hardy
Love Poems
Hollie Hardy
Hollie Hardy is a writer, educator, and author of two books of poetry, Lions Like Us (Red Light Lit Press, 2024) and How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014) winner of the Annual Poetry Center Book Award at San Francisco State University. She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU, teaches private writing workshops online, and edits poetry manuscripts. She is the founder of Praxis Poetry: Weekly Prompts for Poets, and host of the long-running monthly reading series Saturday Night Special: A Virtual Open Mic. She's featured in hundreds of readings across the nation, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She lives in Austin, TX.
Follow on IG: @hollie.hardy Learn more at: holliehardy.com
Writing Prompts for Love Poems
Love is simple, complex, classic, eternal, and offers a myriad of entry points. There’s romantic love, hungry love, familial love, friendship, pet love, monster love, lost love, twisted love, unrequited love, self-love. There’s new love and seasoned love. Fleeting and forever love. Taking inspiration from today’s discussion write your own love poem.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED
1. Write one (or a series) of tiny love note poems. Think Post-It note, postcard, text message, tweet, or Instagram.
RESTLESS
So much of love
happens while we wait
On a train
in a forest of arms
2. Write a poem about desire using metaphors about food, eating, or drinking.
3. Write a poem about lost or unrequited love, about breaking up, missing or remembering someone. You might want to choose a specific moment to narrate.
4. Write a poem that uses surprising metaphors to explore opposites, ironies, and/or reversals in love.
5. Write a love poem from the point of view of a mythical creature.
6. Write a letter poem to a part of your body or your lover's body.
7. Write a list poem repeating the word "because" or "reasons"
because of my love for you____
because I think of you____
because you are mine____
reasons I love you____
8. Write a love letter to a specific group of people—women, democrats, Californians, Native Americans, protestors, voters, oppressed people of the Middle East, refugees, Gen Z, teachers, etc.