Emily Dickinson is one of many people’s favorite poets because she can be playful and deep at the same time. The simple rhyme structure and nature-centric focus of many of her poems provides some friendly templates to help beginning poets try their own hand at letting their imaginations and feelings take first flight.

The assignment, here, is for the writer to imagine that they are an animal or plant and then to write a poem-letter to another animal or plant. They should write from the perspective of the animal they imagine they are while keeping in mind the possible perspective and motivations of the animal to whom they are writing. The poem below, by Emily Dickinson, is a fun example of such a piece.

Bee! I’m expecting you?
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due –

The Frogs got Home last Week –
Are settle, and at work –
Birds, mostly back –
The Clover warm thick –

You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me –
Yours, Fly.

Acts of Light, Bulfinch Press, pg. 118

And, of course, don’t forget to share your poems with the others in your group!