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, ongoing 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 30: MATTHEW M.C. SMITH
The ‘make it new’ poetry prompt
The imagist movement of the early twentieth century (poets, such as T.E. Hulme, H.D., Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and Amy Lowell) prized precision of language, ‘direct treatment of the thing’, economy in expression, and invention – making it new, using a free verse poetic form. The imagists played a key role in modernist literature by focusing primarily on imagery rather than rhetoric or a narrative approach.
Write a poem on one of the following subjects, ensuring that you have your own fresh take on the subject with an inventive approach using unusual or unexpected similes and metaphors, avoiding a cliched or obvious take. Wow us with your images. Go for it!
- War
- Loss
- The moon
- Desire
- The appearance of a bird
- Loss
- The ocean
- The night sky
- A childhood memory
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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