Today’s writing prompt is based on the poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Have you ever heard of the term biophilia? Put as simply as possible, it’s our human tendency to love our natural environment and seek it out. Says Terrapin Bright Green, in 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design,
“Biophilic design can reduce stress, improve cognitive function and creativity, improve our well-being and expedite healing; as the world population continues to urbanize, these qualities are ever more important. Given how quickly an experience of nature can elicit a restorative response, and the fact that U.S. businesses squander billions of dollars each year on lost productivity due to stress-related illnesses, design that reconnects us with nature–biophilic design–is essential for providing people opportunities to live and work in healthy places and spaces with less stress and greater overall health and well-being.”
In other words, whether we are sitting in our homes, schools, or offices, or whether we are out in the park or the woods, Nature calls to something in our “deep heart’s core.” We may or may not be aware of that except when our built environment really cuts us off in significant ways from our natural surroundings. Even then, our greatest awareness may simply be that we feel stressed, and we may not understand how simple the relief could be.
Write a poem that talks about the peace you feel when you go into a secret place in our natural surroundings. It should be a place where you feel relatively safe, but you can still sense some kind of mystery. If you live in a city, such a place might exist in a favorite park, a nearby courtyard, or a building that incorporated biophilic design into its aspect and landscape. Alternately, write a poem about a wide open place where you have a view for miles.
Write the peace you feel by embedding it in the images in the poem, the way Yeats embedded his peace into midnight “all a-glimmer,” evening “full of the linnet’s wings,” and the sounds of “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.”
Want the whole 30 poems, 30 prompts series in one convenient place?
You can get that in Earth to Poetry: A 30-Days, 30-Poems Earth, Self and Other Care Challenge.
