‘Healing and coming together’: How a poet is encouraging writing of poetry by sharing prompts online

One morning in April, Wendo Kenyanito, a schoolteacher in Nairobi, Kenya, came across a poetry prompt online. The prompt was unusual – rather than just focusing on a theme, it presented a structure, with gaps for people to fill in. Intrigued, Wendo decided to take the poetry prompts to his English Literature class full of 15- and 16-year-olds.

“I chose ‘The Affirmation Poem’,” said Kenyanito. “It was an easy way to introduce them to poetry and get them to start penning down their own ideas.” What emerged from that session was a whole variety of verses, written by the students who read them out to each other. The poems were so loved that they decided to hang some on the boards around the class – for many, the first poems they had ever created. The poetry prompts Kenyanito gave to his class were created halfway around the world, by American poet and educator Joseph Fasano.

41-year-old Fasano – author of two novels and five books of poetry, one of which is forthcoming in 2024 – first started to share the prompts in April on Twitter. They have since been retweeted thousands of times; people have responded with their own poems in the replies, many...

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