Good evening, poets, and welcome to dVerse, where we serve up stanzas and verses, and have words on tap! It’s Sarah here, keeping the bar tonight.

I’m always on the lookout for interesting names. I’ve previously done prompts with street names and heritage vegetable names. I’ve enjoyed prompts using cereal brands, perfumes and candies. I’ve considered moth names (look out for that one!), and apple varieties. I love looking at the names of lipsticks and eyeshadows. Tonight, however, we’re going to use the names of paints.

We really need to redecorate our kitchen. It’s looking tired, and grubby, and just a bit dull. We used paint from the Little Greene Paint Co last time, so it was an obvious place to start looking for something new – and the paint names are wonderful!

I’ve picked out a few of them for you to enjoy. And I’m going to keep this very simple. I want you to choose one of these paint names and use it as the inspiration for your poem. That’s all. Keep it as free form as you like. You can use the name in your poem, or as a title. You can do an acrostic if you want – or any other kind of puzzle poem you can think of. If you’re feeling like more of a challenge, see how many of them you can incorporate. Let’s just kick back and have some fun here!

Here is your list:

• Trumpet
• Tea with Florence
• Chemise
• Confetti
• Goblin
• Mirror
• Rolling fog
• First light
• Hidey hole
• Masquerade

Great words, aren’t they? Almost too exciting for paint.

And here’s a little extract from Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market”

“Oh,” cried Lizzie, “Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men.”
Lizzie cover’d up her eyes,
Cover’d close lest they should look;
Laura rear’d her glossy head,
And whisper’d like the restless brook:
“Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.”
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat’s face,
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

Goblin Market – Christina Rosetti

That’s it. You know what to do:

• Write your poem
• Put a link back to here in your post
• Link it up to good old Mr Linky
• Read and comment
• Have fun!