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 14th 2023, over 4200 children have been killed and more than 7000 have been injured “due to unrelenting attacks”, while over 1300 others are missing. According to the World Health Organization, one child is killed in Gaza every 10 minutes. 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.”
DAY 18: ROBERT HAMBERGER
Anticipation
Write a poem or prose poem about the anticipation of being about to meet someone important to you. This can be a lover, partner, child, parent, someone in your family or someone you’ve never met before. It can have happened to you or can be something you imagine happening to you.
In preparation for your writing, as examples please try to read Adrienne Rich’s third poem from her ‘Twenty-One Love Poems’ (in The Dream of a Common Language, Norton, 1978) starting ‘Since we’re not young weeks have to do time/ for years of missing each other’; and Danez Smith’s poem ‘Tonight in Oakland’ (in Don’t Call Us Dead, Graywolf, 2017) starting ‘i did not come here to sing you blues’. Please consider the strategies these poets use about waiting to meet a lover, and the delays before their meeting.
Describe your feelings and where you are, as precisely as you can. Consider comparisons and similes about your feelings, and write about what you might be noticing around you, as you move towards that meeting. How are you travelling towards them? Walking or running or in a wheelchair? Are you waiting for them on a park bench? Are you on a bike or motorbike, a bus or train or even a plane? You can end the poem by meeting them (as Danez Smith does) but the bulk of the poem or prose poem should be about how you’re travelling towards them, what you’re noticing around you and your feelings about what it will be like to meet them. What season is it – what is the weather like? What are you wearing? Are other people sharing the journey with you?
Do you show or hide your feelings? Are you looking forward to the meeting, or concerned or anxious about it? Think of images and rhythms that capture your sense of anticipation.
Consider free writing to help loosen your access to words. Try writing your first draft for seven minutes, using this as a way to explore whatever you are thinking about this meeting. Let yourself write free images and phrases as they arise – even if they don’t fully make sense. Please don’t worry about spelling, grammar or punctation – just keep your pen writing on the page. Don’t censor yourself in any way – be as wild as you like. No-one’s watching. Then please take the images and phrases that interest you most from your Free writing exercise, and begin to carve out a poem or prose poem starting with those images and phrases concerning your central subject: you are about to meet someone important to you. Let your words fly.
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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