Day 32 - Names & Precision in Poetry

Day 32 – Names

Welcome to The Daily Aftershock Writing Prompt—a daily invitation to write from the edges of aftermath, memory, rupture, and repair.

Each day, you'll receive a short, charged prompt designed to crack something open. There are no rules, only resonance. Use these however you need: to begin a poem, to open your diary, to find your voice again.

Names are spells. In poetry, they don’t just label—they invoke. When I name something precisely—rosemary, dog violet, Japanese knotweed—I’m not just describing a plant. I’m naming a feeling, a grief, a gesture I didn’t know how else to make. A truth I could only carry if I rooted it in something living.

In my poem Ending Spell, I began:

Though I am alone
no wood anemone nor butterfly weed shall I lay:

But then I laid down names:

• rosemary for grief

• campion for love

• dog violet for innocence lost

• celandine to renew the cost

• bluebells for leaving

• Japanese knotweed for a curse

These weren’t random flowers. They were offerings. Every named thing in that poem was a way of paying attention, to the wound, the farewell, the moment I had to choose what to let go and what to keep. Naming became a form of mourning. And of magic.

Today, I’m inviting you to do the same.