It’s Dr. Anna Percy here with Day 49 of the Daily Aftershock and a brand new prompt for you.

You may have heard of the form cento in poetry. Traditionally, you borrow a line from a different poet for each line. But today, I’d like you to make a self cento, a cento made entirely from your own words.

Use your own poetry, notebooks, text messages, Facebook statuses, Instagram captions, even a bit of a shopping list. The more unexpected and creative the source material, the more interesting the result.

Just take a line from whatever source you choose. If you’ve written a lot of poems, maybe take a line from each title or the final line of different poems.

Do whatever feels right. The only rule is that every line must come from something you’ve written.

You might want to pick a number, say 10 lines, or go with 14 lines to create a sonnet. If you do that, you can try manoeuvring in a volta, a turn in the poem, around line 10 or 12.

That’s it. That’s the form: the self cento.

Build a poem out of yourself.

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