WRITING PROMPTS TO BENEFIT 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 5th 2023, over 4000 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, we will be posting a writing prompt every day and in doing so, we are hoping to 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 to 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.
DAY 8: ZAKIA CARPENTER-HALL
The Kind of World You Want to Live In
Write a poem that gives the reader a glimpse of the kind of world you want to live in.
This may seem like a gigantic task of visioning and imagination, but it doesn’t have to be. Use Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘Gate-A4’ as a guide. In the poem, one small act of generosity by the speaker leads to putting another passenger at ease, friendship, sharing food and beverage and changing the whole mood and feel of the passengers.
Maybe in your poem one small act can have a ripple effect, can change the course of someone’s day, perhaps beyond, for the better. And the speaker’s action can start out really tiny.
Shihab Nye’s speaker offers translation. What could your speaker offer? What has been offered to you? Maybe you have already been busy building the world you wish to see and live in. If so, where do you see evidence of that world thriving or existing in spite of everything? That could be in your home, among friends, in a conversation, whatever. Explore that experience or moment and allow it to grow.
Free write for 10 or 15 minutes without stopping, crossing out or editing. Then explore the effects of that experience in concrete terms, what can you see/ feel/ touch / hear / taste as a result? How did that experience inform the kind of world you wish to live in, or the kind of world that’s already germinating? And once you’ve explored those questions, go back and add some nuance and texture.
Consider whether there were any difficult aspects of that experience that need to be mentioned. There are some challenges that the speaker needed to face in Shihab Nye’s poem: whether to help and the distress that her fellow passenger was in. It seems likely that in your poem there will also be adversity. How will your speaker address it in a very human, rather than superhuman, way? And as always go bravely into the unknown terrain that the poem takes you. Document what you discover about yourself and our world in real time.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem can be found here:
Please consider donating to a charity providing medical aid in Gaza. We recommend UNICEF’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, but other charities include:
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
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