As 2025 draws to a close, we’re taking the last couple of weeks of the year to breathe, to reflect and to take stock of the past twelve months.

Sometimes the end of the year can feel like a time of regression. The festive period, for many of us, comes with thoughts of family, as well as a renewed commitment to the importance of community. For lots of us, this time of year is invariably tied up with memories of childhood, years gone by, and potential comparison traps. Reflecting on the past twelve months isn’t necessarily an easy practice, or one that can exist without points of emotional tension.

At the same time, the fresh cusp of a new year is within touching distance. We are so nearly at a distinct point of change and of potential renewal. Even if we can understand the relative arbitrariness of the calendar we use and the way the years switch from one to another overnight, there is something essential about the solstice, the movement from the darkest of nights into the days lengthening out into full bodies again. 

This in-between time – as the current year begins to flicker out and the new year readies itself for the plunge – can be an especially generative moment for writing. The drama of the year turning over onto its belly lends itself to poetry and poetic movements. 

The following poetry prompts are designed to help you write into the end of the year, and to celebrate and reflect on the year gone by through poetry.

Prompt 1: Peculiarities of Place

Spend a minute listing five places that have been meaningful to you this year: places that moved you, places that held significance for you, places that mattered. Be as specific as you can: use street names, name particular doctor’s surgeries, leisure centres, churches, bedrooms, etc.

Write a poem using as many of these precise place names as you can. Lean into the ways in which these distinct places might overlap or rub up against one another.

Prompt 2: On Journeys

What is the journey you’ve made most over the course of the past year? A commute? A familiar walk? A drive to a loved one’s home? 

Isolate your most frequented route and use it as a springboard for a poem.

Pay attention to each of your senses as you mentally revisit your familiar journey. Notice details that might at first appear mundane. Reveal their strangeness.

For inspiration, you might want to read Gboyega Odubanjo’s poem, ‘Traffic’.

Prompt 3: What Is Newness?

Is newness a state of mind? A change, an object, a fire shifting from one colour to another, an inhale of breath? Maybe it’s a stone skimming across a flat, cold lake and finally sinking. Maybe it’s a birth or a death or a commitment.

Draw on the physical world around you to free write your own poem in response to the question ‘what is newness?’

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