DAY 4: A PROMPT BY KATHRYN BEVIS

WRITING PROMPTS TO SUPPORT CHILDREN IN GAZA

UNICEF reports that in Gaza, “hundreds of thousands of children and families are caught in a catastrophic situation” and that, as of November 3rd 2023, over 3700 children have been killed and more than 7000 have been injured “due to unrelenting attacks”, while a thousand others are missing. Outlining the charity’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, UNICEF spokesman James Elder explains: “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.” Elder has also called for “children held hostage in Gaza [to] be immediately reunited with their families and loved ones”. Recent updates state that “hundreds of thousands of children … remain trapped in a war zone with little or no access to food, water, electricity, medicine or medical care”.

For the duration of NaNoWriMo 2023, we will be posting a writing prompt every day and in doing so, we encourage our community to donate to charities providing medical aid to children in desperate need in this unprecedented crisis. These prompts have been created by writers from Wales or with a connection to Wales and its magazines and presses. The prompts are on all kinds of subjects, but many are related to anti-violence and the work of empathy, and they are offered with the simple hope that they might encourage people to donate in support of medical aid in Gaza. We include a list of suggested charities to donate to below, highlighting the Appeal for Children in Gaza.

UNICEF “continues to call for an immediate ceasefire as 1.1 million people — nearly half of them children — in northern Gaza have been warned to move out of the way of a widescale military assault, but with nowhere safe for them to go”. Elder concludes: “The humanitarian situation has reached lethal lows, and yet all reports point to further attacks. Compassion – and international law – must prevail.”

Please see the list of suggested charities at the end of the post. A new prompt will be posted until at least the end of November 2023. Today’s is from Kathryn Bevis, a fine writer who has been writing recently from a “new perspective” as someone living with terminal cancer.

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DAY 4: KATHRYN BEVIS

Writing about Colour

Freewrite for two minutes about the colour purple: what associations, stories, foods, seasons, flowers arise as you write? 

Repeat this process, writing short freewrites for: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and black.

Read the poem ‘Colors passing through us’ by Marge Piercy on the Poetry Foundation website, here.

Ask yourself, what is the thread, the spine of the poem? What holds it together as a list poem?

Now, can you find a rationale for transforming your own freewriting into poetry, a reason that calls to you? It might be that the rationale only emerges as you write.

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Please consider donating to a charity providing medical aid in Gaza. We recommend UNICEF’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, but other charities include:

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

The World Food Programme

Doctors Without Borders