Weekly Prompt: YW’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Contest 2nd Runner-Up)

This week’s prompt comes from LR reader “YW,” whose submission to our National Poetry Month Contest we’ve chosen as our second runner-up.

Prompt: Rewrite a fairy tale in verse from a different character’s perspective (e.g. the witch in Hansel and Gretel).

We were intrigued by this persona poem exercise, and thought that it might be interesting to consider in conversation with Louise Glück’s haunting take on Hansel and Gretel, “Gretel in Darkness.”  Here’s an excerpt of the poem to get you thinking (the rest can be found on the Poetry Foundation’s web site):

“Gretel in Darkness

by Louise Glück

This is the world we wanted.

All who would have seen us dead

are dead. I hear the witch’s cry

break in the moonlight through a sheet

of sugar: God rewards.

Her tongue shrivels into gas. . . .

Now, far from women’s arms

and memory of women, in our father’s hut

we sleep, are never hungry.

Why do I not forget?

My father bars the door, bars harm

from this house, and it is years.”

Congratulations to YW, and happy Friday to all!  Look out for the prompt from our first runner-up next week.