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Seven Courses of Food Poems
To feed your creativity (+ writing prompts)
In another life, I’m a food writer: Marveling over the shimmering glaze of a gravy, finding a recipe to highlight the seasonal sweetness of chokecherries, or ruminating on the perfect simplicity of a golden-brown roast chicken.
The topic of food is perfect for writing from our bodies, for warding off abstractions. Eating is such a sensory experience — taste, texture, smell, feel. It’s also much deeper than sensation.
How we eat, why we eat, our feelings about our bodies, where and who we eat with — how hungry we are — how hungry we’ve been — all of these and more shape an experience of eating. Food is history, culture, and tradition. Food is survival and trauma. Food is love; is there anything that feels better than a great meal with people you enjoy?
And of course, food is universal. We all have to eat.
When I began looking into food as a poetic theme, I expected to find lots and lots of berries and fruit. I didn’t expect to find quite so many onion poems. But as a hardcore allium stan, it was a nice surprise.
Anyway, order up! Here’s a round up of poems centered on experiences of food — eating it, craving it, remembering it, and imagining it.
