So long #NationalPoetryMonth

Last week, I visited Matt Forest Esenwine's, Radio, Rhyme and Rhythm and learned about Sedoka. The form appealed to me. Here's an early attempt:

waking birds compose
poetry with today's dawn

sunbeams falling as line breaks

~~~                 

trees on the hillside
applaud with shivers and snaps 
higher praise cannot be found

(c) Linda Mitchell

Utagawa, Tanaka Heijiro. “Japanse Struikzanger Op Pruimentak, Met Haiku - Hiroshige (I) , Utagawa, Tanaka Heijiro - Google Arts & Culture.” 

More metapoems from this month 

The skinny below is inspired by a Molly Hogan poem at Nix the Comfort Zone.

Finally...

Selfie Poem

A poem stands
before the light

of a mirror
first stanza
no, second--
              thrust forward
metaphors tucked in,
rhymes arranged
in rhythmic ringlets
A dazzling
bright-as-our-sun
hyperbole
of a smile grins

until a quiet
click.

The End

(c) Linda Mitchell

Sherman, Cindy. “Madonna (Self-Portrait) - Cindy Sherman - Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, artsandculture.google.com/asset/madonna-self-portrait/vAHKe_oWiZre3Q.

Many thanks to Irene Latham for sharing a favorite source of art at Google Arts & Culture. I've spent time enjoying it. Please visit this week's Poetry Friday Round-up at Beyond Literacy with Carol Varsalona.

Spring Break Poems

Happy Poetry Friday!

I've had a full, rich spring break staycation with my family. I've enjoyed waking up early, reading poetry, writing and revising poems, cooking, walking the dog, catching up on adulting details (doctor visits and cleaning) while spring unfolds all around with Virginia Red Bud and Cherry blossoms. It's been so nice, I hate to see it come to an end. 

For those that celebrate, chag Pesach samech and Happy Easter this weekend.


This week I came across:

Jacqueline Woodson’s Lovely Letter to Children About Kindness, Presence, and How Books Transform Us

on Brain Pickings by Maria Popova. 


Woodson's letter hit me smack-dab in the middle of my reader and writer's heart. Her words stay with me. And, in my writing time I found myself returning to it, responding... 

Found haiku from Woodson's Letter

evenings of reading
this perfect moment, called now
my sister’s stories 

(c) Linda Mitchell

Skinny Found in Jacqueline’s Letter

“this perfect moment, called Now.”

workday

Now

stories

my

Sister’s

Now

in

my

ear

Now

Stories in this perfect moment

(c) Linda Mitchell

This week, The American of Academy of Poets shared Emily Dickinson's ...

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/make-prairie-1755

...which reminded me of The Nerdy Book Club's Celebration of Poetry last Sunday with Laura Shovan. She gave a delightful presentation of teaching poetry to young people--loaded with resources. Make sure you check it out on facebook. 

Laura shared how a 'cross-out poem' can jumpstart kids into the reading and writing poetry. Isn't Dickinson's poem perfect for a cross-out poem?  Here's one I wrote using words from Woodson's letter:

I hope you are enjoying #NationalPoetryMonth as much as I am. Our Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem is shaping up nicely with selected song lyric lines. My line was from Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Beautiful', less than one minute old added yesterday. What would you add next?

https://www.facebook.com/events/412508032913304/

Finally, as I write this, we are celebrating National Poem in Your Pocket Day! It is a treat and a blessing to have received a postcard poem from Irene Latham to carry in my pocket...which was actually my book that I'm reading and sat down with in the late afternoon. Thank you, Irene! What poems do you carry?

How to Live Your Poem
by Irene Latham

Love without borders.

invite strangers to tea

Vow to be astonished

each moment you breathe.

Yank off the covers

open wide the door

Unbuckle your dreams;

release your inner troubadour.

Praise stones and blossoms equally.

Overflow your own banks.

Electrify your life with questions.

Most of all: give thanks.

Progressive Poem April 18

Got it, Amy!

I just caught a poem from one of my favorite poets, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater. She had the 17th line in this year's Kidlitosphere's Progressive Poem and told me to "take it away," because I have line 18 today.

Our progressive poem, contains lines contributed by a different authors. This month, kidlit poets from around the blogosphere each contribute a line from a song to the poem as it grows and grows. Kidlitosphere bloggers have been doing this since Irene Latham started our annual #NationalPoetryMonth tradition in 2012.

This year, poet author Matt Forest Esenwine challenged us to use lines from song lyrics. I have a handful of songs that immediately put me into a good mood. Isn't She Lovely by Stevie Wonder is one of them...my line is from that song.

First, take a look at the poem so far:

KIDLITOSPHERE PROGRESSIVE POEM 2019 -
DAY 18

Endless summer; I can see for miles...
Fun, fun, fun - and the whole world smiles.
No time for school - just time to play,
we swim the laughin' sea each and every day.

You had only to rise, lean from your window,
the curtain opens on a portrait of today.
Kodachrome greens, dazzling blue,
It's the chance of a lifetime,

make it last forever-ready? Set? Let's Go!
Come, we'll take a walk, the sun is shining down,
Not a cloud in the sky got the sun in my eyes.
Tomorrow's here. It's called today.

Gonna get me a piece o' the sky.
I wanna fly like an eagle, to the sea
and there's a tiger in my veins.
Oh, won't you come with me waltzing the waves,
                                                                                          diving the deep?

It's not easy to know
less than one minute old

****

Below you can read the list of where each poem line originated:

Found Lines:
L1   The Who, 'I Can See for Miles' / The Beach Boys, 'Endless Summer'
L2   The Beach Boys, 'Fun, Fun, Fun'/Dean Martin, "When You're Smiling"
L3   The Jamies, "Summertime, Summertime'

L4   The Doors, 'Summer's Almost Gone' / Led Zeppelin, 'Good Times, Bad Times'

L5    Ray Bradbury, 'Dandelion Wine

L6    Joni Mitchell, "Chelsea Morning"

L7    Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," "Dazzling  Blue"

L8    Dan Fogelberg, "Run for the Roses" 

L9    Spice Girls, "Wannabe"/Will Smith, "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It"

L10  The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"

L11   The Carpenters, "Top of the World"

L12   Lin-Manuel Miranda, "Underneath the Lovely London Sky" 

          from MARY POPPINS

L13   Carole King, "Hi-de-ho (That Sweet Roll)"

L14  Steve Miller, "Fly Like An Eagle"

L15   Don Felder, "Wild Life"

L16   Nowlenn Leroy, "Song of the Sea" (lullaby)

L17   Sara Bareilles, "She Used to Be Mine" from WAITRESS
L18  Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely" 

And here is a list of the line finders:

Poem Line Contributors:

1 Matt @ Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme

2 Kat @ Kathryn Apel

3 Kimberly @ KimberlyHutmacherWrites

4 Jone @ DeoWriter

5 Linda @ TeacherDance

6 Tara @ Going to Walden

7 Ruth @ thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown

8 Mary Lee @ A Year of Reading

9 Rebecca @ Rebecca Herzog

10 Janet F. @ Live Your Poem

11 Dani @ Doing the Work that Matters

12 Margaret @ Reflections on the Teche

13 Doraine @ Dori Reads

14 Christie @ Wondering and Wandering

15 Robyn @ Life on the Deckle Edge

16 Carol @ Beyond LiteracyLink

17 Amy @ The Poem Farm

18 Linda @ A Word Edgewise

19 Heidi @ my juicy little universe

20 Buffy @ Buffy's Blog

21 Michelle @ Michelle Kogan

22 Catherine @ Reading to the Core

23 Penny @ a penny and her jots

24 Tabatha @ The Opposite of Indifference

25 Jan @ Bookseestudio

26 Linda @ Write Time

27 Sheila @ Sheila Renfro

28 Liz @ Elizabeth Steinglass

29 Irene @ Live Your Poem

Bounce to you, Heidi!

April 12 Metapoems

Finally Friday!

 SPRING BREAK starts today. Wheeeeeeeee!

Thank you to Irene Latham for hosting this week's round-up at her blog, Live Your Poem AND the amazing Progressive Poem this year. My day is coming up and I've tuned into my Classic Rock station to be ready for my line on 4/14.

#NationalPoetryMonth stresses me out a tiny bit. I'm excited as a reader and writer of poetry.  I'm also a Poetry advocate and want spend my time getting poetry out to everyone. I find it hard to both as well as and as much as I would like. This month I've been sharing Poetry Pandemonium progress...but none of my own writing.

I've been playing with meta-poetry. Meta poems are poems in which the poem is about poetry. 

Shhhhhhh

This poem doesn’t know

it’s being written.

This poem is fast asleep

chasing poem parts

round the garden

in a dream of hide and seek.

This poem might

run after rhyme

or rhythm for a beat,

words that can be dreamed up
when a poem is fast asleep.

Shhhh, dearest reader

poem parts still run around,

let's give this poem

some sleep time
so a more perfect poem

can be found.

(c) Linda Mitchell


Today, students vote in our final Poetry Pandemonium Match up. The two semi-finalists that won all rounds are:

She Was Beautiful by F. Scott Fitzgerald (poem of repetition)

and,

I Ate a Spicy Pepper by Kenn Nesbitt (poem of hyperbole)

I will post the winner on social media as soon as we know and here after school.

https://www.poetry4kids.com/?s=spicy+pepper

Enjoy some pics below of my school's Student Literacy Council hanging poems up in the wilds of our hallways, windows, bathrooms for #NationalPoetryMonth in conjunction with Poetry Pandemonium. These were the "extra" poems not selected for Pandemonium brackets...but cheerfully used in this way.

Poem Placement: I wrote where to place poems
on sticky notes. Students selected a poem & sticky
then went out to hang it up.

Restrooms are a good place for brain...er, poetry breaks

One of my favorite kiddos (shh don't tell I have favorites) hangs, 'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelou

Poetry Pandemonium II -- The Poems

Happy Friday and Happy Poetry Month to All!

I hope you are enjoying some reading, writing and listening already this April. There are so many wonderful kidlit poetry celebrations. For a full list, see Jama Rattigan's post of 3/29.

For this week's Poetry Friday round-up visit Karen Edmisten. Thanks to her, we have a lovely collection of blog entries to peruse this weekend full of Poetry Month postings. Thank you, Karen!

Last week, I detailed the implementation of Poetry Pandemonium at my school. This project is a review of Language Arts concepts embedded in a brackets style poetry competition before state testing begins at the end of April. For these details, click here.

So far, Poetry Pandemonium is going swimmingly. Teachers have commented on how much they have enjoyed sharing poetry in homeroom with their students. However, an anonymous survey at the end of the project may produce some tweaking that needs to be done. This is the first year my school's Literacy Council has hosted the project.


This week I'm sharing poems from the project. If you have resources you'd like to share back--that would be super! I love great collaborations among friends.

Winning poems are highlighted in yellow

As you can see, there are poems from

Imperfect: poems about mistakes: an anthology for middle schoolers, by Tabatha Yeatts Lonske (History House 2018)

and, 

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations: Holiday Poems for the Whole Year in English and Spanish, by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell (Pomelo, 2015).

These are resources that I introduced to and reminded colleagues of. Both are available to staff in our professional collection. Teachers contributed poems from their various sources. And, I think the strength of Poetry Pandemonium is that it was created from contributions from staff members.

  As I mentioned last week, this entire project is heavily influence by NCTE
resource. https://www2.ncte.org/blog/2017/03/celebrate-march-madness-poetry/ 

As Poetry Pandemonium has grown on our score board (aka bulletin board) so has the level of visual WOW! My favorite were the butterfly decorations until I saw the boarder our Library Media Assistant made from recycled book pages. Isn't it cool? Definitely keepers -- our assistant and the border ;)

Follow @LibraryMiddle for daily deets on Poetry Pandemonium

Getting a response from @poetry4kids (Kenn Nesbitt) over his poem winning the Hyperbole contest was  extra fun this week!