Celebrating Nikki Grimes

Good June To Ya,

Don't miss Poet-author, Irene Latham's beautiful Live Your Poem for a top-off to your poetry cup today.  This week she's invited us to celebrate poet, Nikki Grimes.

I met Nikki Grimes in the children's section of my local library. When my kids scattered amongst the shelves and puzzle tables, I picked up, Gorilla Goes Walking and simultaneously thought, Wow this is such a cool book and, I want to write like this!

Grimes, Nikki, and Shane Evans. When Gorilla Goes Walking. Orchard Press, 2007

Fast forward to my weekly Kidlitosphere's Poetry Friday blogging. I'm having a blast writing, have met this community of writers and today we celebrate the work of Nikki Grimes too.

Feel free to skip around this post. Nikki has written a lot of books for kids! (seventy-five and counting). But, that's just her published work. There is lots more to celebrate--I may have gotten carried away.

I spent some time watching videos of Ms. Grimes. This interview is from April 2020. In it, Nikki says, golden shovel is my newest toy, I love that form. And, she suggests word play for students and teachers such as, look up the word quarantine in the dictionary. That bit of the interview inspired this golden shovel.

Look up quarantine in the dictionary*

I’d rather not look

  at schoolwork today. What’s up?

 I ask Jesse when her face appears on the

screen. Nothin’, dude, I’m as bored as every word

in the dictionary except quarantine!

 That word’s busy these days. People in

home isolation to keep safe from the
scarier words: Covid-19, hot spot, infecting that same dictionary

(c) Linda Mitchell--draft

*Sreenivasan, Sree. “@Sree's Daily Covid19 Show.” Videos: Nikki's Jam, 27 Apr. 2020, www.nikkigrimes.com/videos/videos_nikkis_jam.html.


Word Play is something you'll see Nikki Grimes recommend to readers and writers of poetry in many interviews including Today's Little Ditty...

https://michellehbarnes.blogspot.com/2018/03/classroom-connections-with-nikki-grimes.html

The above word play prompt inspired Scissor...

Scissor 

is a sharp word
a cut to the chase
blade against blade word
blood-flavored if I’m not careful
Scissor looks like Mom’s don’t touch fabric

laid out for yards on the dining room table
waiting for her surgical eye and hand

to tissue paper match cloth to pattern
with a quarter inch seam allowance

that buys new clothes

(c) Linda Mitchell --draft

Ms. Grimes is much more than poet. She's a prose writer, painter, card creator, blue collector, Christmas decorator extraordinaire...how can I celebrate so much?

How to Celebrate Nikki Grimes

First read.
Understand poetry
is a facet
of her art
see cobalt blue and purple?
see roses in her garden?
a gallery of paintings
and handmade cards?
There’s seventy-five books
written for young people
             --and counting

The body of her work
grows and grows

Not that it’s been easy
her memoir shows us that
in verse, of course

In hazards
our poet discovered sparkles
            specks of childhood
            spots of love
to share
with a world-wide audience
             with us
I think love is
a secret sauce
she's employed
as connector of words
images, color

We celebrate in kind

poem begetting poem

we say thank you Ms. Grimes
thank you
thank
you

(c) Linda Mitchell--draft

About those roses...who can resist Nikki's extraordinary love of roses? Not me. Not this haiku either...

words by Linda Mitchell. Photo by Capri23auto/pixabay