How To... write a thrutopoem

Looking at the Thrutopian Shovel

Apr 30, 2025

Or should we say thru-to poem? To answer the needs of the times we live in, we’ve been inventing new poetic forms and taking inspiration from existing forms to see what they can lend thru-to-poetry.

Terrance Hayes invented the Golden Shovel to write into a line of poetry by another poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. We thought the Golden Shovel form might lend itself to taking an environmental or activist message as a starter, rather than a line of poetry.

We were experimenting with ways that thrutopoetry could meet ‘message’, asking what poetry could bring to the message and what the message could bring to thrutopoetry that wants to be practical, purposeful and useful by creating longing in the reader for systems change and a liveable future.

The Thrutopian Shovel borrows a factual line or phrase, that carries a thrutopian message, and uses the words from the chosen line as the last word of each line in a poem — such that if you only read the last words down the length of the poem, you’ll be reading the original message.

Here’s an example:

The poet took Jim Dator’s phrase “Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous” and worked it into the poem itself before running it down the outside edge of the poem, making a hinge in the middle of the poem to emphasise the key part of the message, before flipping Dator’s message to the first word of each line in the second half. This mirroring allows the poem to show what that future might look and feel like in more detail and suggests that we’re capable of undoing wrongs and creating systems change if we reframe the way we think about ourselves. The tone of this poem seems conversational and witty but contains serious messages about how we might reimagine our relationship to Earth. So in this example the poetry and the message collude to perform a ‘ridiculous’ exaggeration that leads us to that final eye-roll, inviting us to imagine that if we ‘made up’ owning land, we can ‘un-make it up’ and do things differently.

Have a go

If you’d like to have a go at writing a Thrutopian Shovel yourself, keep in mind what you can do to bring poetry to your message and open up a way through to a better future.

Here are some statement phrases you could sample to work with:

You cannot build what you cannot imagine - Walidah Imarisha

Perhaps now is the time that we must join the awesome, the unexpected, already present in the world - Jayna Brown (Black Utopias)

The future must enter into you a long time before it happens - Rainer Maria Rilke

People don’t need new facts, they need a new story. Change their story and change their behaviour - Rob Hopkins

They tried to bury us but we are seeds - activist slogan

You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give - Ursula Le Guin

The future is obvious, but the potential impossible is calling softly and knocking gently - Sun Ra

The Ministry of Global Joy will be responsible for issuing global joy impact statements for all potential policy decisions - Katie Gilmartin

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make - Dr Jane Goodall

A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. Work that doesn’t grind us to the bone? Naïve. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly - Ruha Benjamin

Please SEND YOUR POEMS to Bending The Arc, we’d love to read what you do with the prompt and submissions open in July.

Craft note from Alice Willitts about using this form:

“To me, this poem is a failure and that’s okay. Writing in form is not something I’m drawn to and usually produces nothing interesting (to me) but I have become weirdly determined to make poetic forms for thrutopia for reasons I can’t fully explain — maybe to do with purpose and usefulness, maybe safety. To respond to this terrifying time of husks in a way that feels new, unsettling, problematic, courageous is inherently important somehow. Can I risk writing in a way that I might previously have found embarrassing or foolish, in ways I might be bad at? So in that sense, this poem is on its way to somewhere, building my muscles for the change. I do feel some tantalising shifts happening in my work as a result of immersing myself in thrutopia.
While this poem flops for me personally (because it doesn’t really risk enough and ends up being a cute exercise) I’m so interested to learn from what other poets do with the prompt. We’re all new in thrutopoetry, all inventing it, and I’m keen to see what can be done and try again. Also, maybe some public failure is the whole point actually when admitting that the unfinishable, unwritable promise of better tomorrows is the best, viable option we have for renewal. Like in that children’s book* where they’re searching for a bear and at every obstacle they say, we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it. I think thrutopoetry’s like that.” - Alice Willitts
*We’re Going On A Bear Hunt - Michael Rosen