20 Bitter(Sweet) October Poetry Prompts

Welcome to our October Poetry Prompts page where we bring to you beautiful and original ideas about the feelings of Octobers for you to create some art on!

October is a month of change.

And nostalgia.

Summer’s changing into winter. You’re thinking back to last year and remembering what kept you going on. You’re searching for memories in the smallest of things, the way the sun sets this Tuesday, the way you stay up late making up a story in your mind, the way you re-watch a TV show and smile just like you did last time.

It’s fun writing about October. There are some feelings that become more beautiful and more pronounced when you put them into words on a page.

Exactly the reason why we’re here with this post about poetry prompts for October.

Below is a list of 20 October Poetry Prompts for you to get your creative streak up and running again.

Bitter October Poetry Prompts

• “Nothing is real except the present, and already I feel the weight of centuries smothering me.” (The Journals of Sylvia Plath)
• Write if October was a person you used to love.
• I’m folding summer into the pocket of my track pants. I’m ready to swallow October.
• “Around this time every year, / The air grows heavier.” Start your poem with this feeling.
• “I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.” (The Journals of Sylvia Plath)
• October sun carrying the smell of grief and whispered forgotten promises.
• “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / It gives a lovely light!” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
• Write something about hollow, ochre ember lights
• “All my life I have been able to feel happiness, / except whatever was not happiness, / which I also remember.” (The Pond, Mary Oliver)
• “I would like to step out of my heart’s door and be under the great sky.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Bittersweet Poetry Prompts for October

• “Just four days until October and life already starts to feel more beautiful.”
• What is beginning this October? What change, without you or within you?
• Crisp morning air. A shiver in your spine as you get out of bed.
• Everything is beautiful, and you’re running in a field of lilies and deciding to go on living, the sun is shining.
• “April is the cruelest month…” October is…? (The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot)
• “Winter is peeking through, but the ground is orange.”
• You can write about autumn just well. Orange leaves paint the ground. But do try writing about a single leaf falling, it’s shaky descent, the isolation, the way time freezes as you get lost in watching the bright orange stir through the air.
• A conversation with a ghost who flits by the piano bench as you play Beethoven.
• Experiment with surrealism in your lines.
• Write something about the feeling Anne gets here: ““Anne reveled in the world of color about her.” Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill–several thrills?”” (Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery)

Did these ideas spark some creativity? Some bittersweet memories? We’d love to hear about it!

Want some more inspiration? Check out this beautiful October mood board.

Autumn is here and it’s time to let the old, worn leaves of inactivity shake off with the gentle breeze of incoming winter. Get up and get going.