Writing poems about messages
Each of the teaching ideas below is linked to familiar ways in which messages are thought about
today and/or conveyed.
The following prompts are designed to encourage creative writing (and thinking) rather than the
production of conventional poems, and most guide students to write list poems. This is a form
that is straightforward in providing structure whilst also encouraging creative ideas in continuous
runs of lines.
All of the ideas are described in detail here as teaching notes, with models to support students
with ideas before writing their poems.
1. Text message list poem
This idea uses text message abbreviations to prompt students in writing creative interpretations
instead of literal meanings of the selected abbreviations.
Working individually or as pairs/small groups, you will need
to share with students a list of text message abbreviations,
easily found online. Be selective – these come with the
obvious health warning regarding suitability!
IMHO it is time to reflect
SWALK is rare on paper
U4E as long as it lasts
2. Message in a bottle poem: ‘Message to myself’
A popular writing workshop model is to
write a letter giving advice to a younger
self. There are many examples online, such
as Victoria Beckham’s, featured in Vogue:
Message to myself
I hope you have
been happy
scored a thousand goals
returned from that trip to Mars
passed your exams
‘I know you are struggling right now,’ she
says, ‘You are not the prettiest, or the
thinnest, or the best at dancing at the Laine
Theatre Arts college. You have never
properly fitted in, although you are sharing
your Surrey school digs with really nice girls.
You have bad acne. You think the principal
has put you at the back of the end-of-year
show (in a humiliatingly bright purple Lycra
leotard) because you are too plump to go at
the front. (This may or may not be true.)’
I hope you have
always washed your hands
invented tasty food without calories
written the book Homework Made a Doddle
fallen deeply in love
I hope you have
You could ask students to write messages to
themselves in the future in a poetic form,
hoping for and anticipating achievements
and experiences. You can give them a
choice of tone, and if required, this ‘I hope
you have …’ model for students:
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made up for that big mistake
(you know the one)
run your fastest time
stopped changing your hair colour.
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Writing poems about messages
3. Message in a bottle poem: ‘Rescue Me’
Suggest to students that they have been stranded somewhere
(you could suggest a desert island, so that their bottle is found
in the sea). Alternatively, go for a setting that is sinister and
oppressive (a dungeon or even house where someone is kept
captive) where loneliness would also be a common theme.
Discuss together the details students would include: sand,
heat, lack of food and water, shelter, loneliness etc. Once you
have gathered some ideas together, you could give students
the refrain ‘rescue me from …’ and these lines as a prompt:
rescue me from the sand and sand and sand and sand
rescue me from the jungle’s silence
rescue me from the jungle’s night-time voices
rescue me from sickly fruit
rescue me from the mirage of McDonalds
rescue me from the sound of my own thoughts
4. Message in a bottle poem: ‘Uncorking the bottle’
You could share facts and stories about the history of messages in bottles, for example:

Queen Elizabeth I was so concerned that bottles washed ashore might contain messages
inside sent home from British spies abroad, that she appointed an ‘Uncorker of Ocean
Bottles’ and only they were allowed to retrieve the messages. For anyone else to open
them was a crime punishable by the death penalty!

‘Drift bottles’ are used in science to measure the pace and direction of ocean currents.
There are many different ways in which bottles are weighted to control the conditions for
their drifting, and they can travel surprising distances, including one that circled
Antarctica one and a half times before landing in Tasmania, and one that made it from
Mexico to the Philippines!

In the 18th century, Chunosuke Matsuyama, a treasurehunting seaman from Japan, was shipwrecked on an island in
the South Pacific. He carved a message into coconut wood,
put it in a bottle and released it. It was found in the same
village where Matsuyama was born in 1935.
Once you have stirred up students’ imaginations with where a bottle
might go, you could ask them to settle on some of their own ideas
and stories, and put these in poetic form. If you would like to use a
list poem model again, you could use these lines:
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Writing poems about messages
Uncorking the bottle
I uncorked the bottle and discovered
this drift current flows from a blue whale’s travels
this drift current flows from plastic palpitations
this drift current flows from the Titanic’s echo
I uncorked the bottle and discovered
this drift current flows from sharks chewing
this drift current flows from an unbreakable code
this drift current flows with unanswered secrets
5. Mixed messages poem
This idea requires some online research and preparation, and is a relatively challenging idea for
students. Teachers will need to test a word generator to use with students first, found online as
a ‘text mixer’. The original text to feed in could be:

any of the poems already written about messages

a descriptive or narrative passage, perhaps specifically about messages

texts about messages in any context

anecdotes about messages in bottles.
Remind students that the resulting text can then be manipulated and their resulting poem
doesn’t have to make literal sense, but should be grammatically sound. Using the text of the
‘Uncorking the bottle’ poem above, a mixed text version is:
This drift current flows from sharks blue whale’s travels this drift current flows from plastic
palpitations this drift chewing this drift current flows from current flows from the Titanic’s
echo I uncorked the bottle and discovered I uncorked the bottle and discovered an
unbreakable code this drift current this drift current flows from a. Flows from a.
At this point, students should craft their new
poem, selecting words from the jumble. So for
instance:
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Bottle
and discover
the Titanic’s
echo
chewing this drift.
This current
flows from
an unbreakable code
uncorked.
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