30in30 Writing Prompt Roundup 2025
This year saw the return of Red Room Poetry's 30in30 writing competition for Poetry Month.
From 1-31 August 2025, we released a daily writing prompt created by our outstanding 30in30 commissioned artists. This year, you wrote almost 3,000 poems in response — and it has been a pleasure reading them all.
As Poetry Month comes to a close, and inspired by the thousands of wonderful 3-line poems you created, we invite others to take part in this collective writing exercise.
Below you'll find all of 2025's 30in30 writing prompts. All you have to do is have a go. Respond to one, two, five or all. Take your time and savour each one or devour every prompt in one go. There are no rules — all that matters is that you have fun.
Speaking of fun, here are some suggestions:
- Try writing more than three lines
- Play with form
- Close your eyes and just scroll, see where your cursor lands and respond to that prompt
Alongside the prompts, you'll find a link to the commissioned poems that inspired them. We highly encourage you to read them too.
Happy writing!
Recall a time you have looked underwater, and make a list of what you saw. Then write a poem that disrupts the surface of things.
Speak your truth as if it’s scripture. The mic is live, and the revolution is listening—what needs to be heard to set your spirit free?
Nobody likes being stuck in their head. I like to be in my foot. Is it freedom or a whole new prison? Spend some time in your foot and see what you write.
If the human is the limit, the human is the limit.
Write a poem responding to this.
Visit one of the world’s galleries virtually.
What impresses, surprises, angers or otherwise intrigues you? Look for what unsettles you. Lean into the discomfort. Write about it.
Wallace Stevens wrote, “Of what disaster is this the imminence?”
And elsewhere: “Of what is this house composed if not of the sun?”
Mix imminent chaos with a shaft of light moment, in a poem of 8-14 lines.
T.S. Eliot is misquoted as having said 'Good poets borrow; great poets steal' (It wasn't quite that...).
Steal something.
Adopt a kitten
if not in reality
then write a haiku
Pastel sway fur bone slight flick
elder knowledge knows but does she remember
me why should she
I am unrememberable in her remarkable world
View, I miss her now she is gone. Too many leaving
Too much removed.
Write a poem on remembering.
Write a poem as a cage for an animal.
How might your creature rattle that cage?
And how might it rattle you?
Imagine coming back to a parking ticket on your car. And how this serves as a constant governmental reminder that your car, nor you, do not belong here. That even on stolen First Nations land, you must pay for your time in this space.
Write an ode to the mouth, to the tongue, to language.
What’s your divination? Is it palmistry, tea leaves, tarot? Or have you invented your own: bruiseomancy streetlightmancy, footpathistry?
Write a poem from the entrails.
Do nothing, no screens, for 30 minutes.
Before bed, write down three words.
In the morning, write a poem using the words.
Write a poem from the perspective of just one part of your body.
Collect words or short phrases from three very different sources (e.g., journal, weather report, advertising).
Paste into a single document.
Move the words around until they generate some heat.
Write a basket, a bag, a vessel, into being; what does it carry?
Visit a waterbody nearby (a lake, a sea, or even a bowl of water in your kitchen), and make a list poem of the things you cannot see or hear.
Write an observational poem about a stranger—you might encounter them on the bus, in a park, or at the grocery store—and imagine their life. What are their thoughts, their desires?
Write a poem about someone who once mothered you. Work in fragments—think of a story they once told you, the scent of their living room, their superstitions. Gather the fragments into a poem.
Put on instrumental music and dance ecstatically for a minimum of 5 minutes. Write a praise poem.
Write a poem in the style of my poem 13 Ways To Drink Chocolate Milk. It is a mix of observations about the food you are consuming and what is going on around you in the public place where you are consuming it.
A mouth unlearning silence.
What came before?
Write what comes after.
Hear the call of the whale amongst the screams of humanity, write about where the currents take you.
Imagine you have succumbed to a long illness and while living out your final days, you’ve composed your own eulogy. What do you want to say to your friends and family?
Is there a song stuck in your head?
Select a short lyric. Write this vertically on the righthand margin, so there’s one word finishing each line. Fill in the blanks to create a Golden Shovel! Remember to reference the borrowed material.
Write a poem that is also your political manifesto.
Keep your Ancestors fire burning.
Write a to-do list — taking in the banal as well as the bucket — and remix it as a poem.
Think of a word in another language that can’t be translated into English, or a feeling, thing or idea that doesn’t yet have a word. Write a poem about it.
Select ten words from a favourite poem, observe the night sky, write ten more words or an idea. The following day within Nature compose a poem inspired by these words.