Thursday, April 30, 2020

Poetry in Action: Poem Movies and a Postcard for My Pocket


congerdesign

"You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket."
              – John Adams, in a letter to his son John Quincy at the University of Leiden


One of the silver linings that has come of all of us being stuck at home for National Poetry Month is the number of folks who have taken to reading their work aloud on YouTube. While I have not braved those waters yet, I'm grateful for those who have, and to two poet friends in particular who have shared poems from The Best of Today's Little DittyRobyn Hood Black and Margaret Simon. It's been such a treat to hear their poems in their own voices!

So today, on the last day of National Poetry Month, I would like to share those four short videos, with a heart full of dittylove and appreciation.

Paperback and Kindle versions available for purchase at Amazon.com.


From the first volume of The Best of Today's Little Ditty (2014-2015), "I turn" by Robyn Hood Black was inspired by Bob Raczka's November 2014 challenge to write a haiku about a monster. The poem is short, but packs a wallop. Make sure to watch all the way to the end for a special surprise. But don't be scared—it's just a video.



From the second volume, The Best of Today's Little Ditty 2016, Robyn shares a beautiful poem titled "Blank," inspired by Douglas Florian's January 2016 challenge to "write a poem about nothing."



And from the most recent volume, The Best of Today's Little Ditty 2017-2018, we have two poems. The first is a performance of Robyn's "Epitaffy" that's good, spooky fun! It was inspired by J. Patrick Lewis and Jane Yolen's February 2018 challenge to write an epitaph poem.



The second selection from the same volume comes from Margaret Simon—"Window Impressionism." It's a gorgeous, mindful poem inspired by Julie Fogliano's May 2018 challenge to write a poem that comes from staring out the window and writing what you see.



Finally, since today also happens to be Poem in Your Pocket Day, I'd like to share a postcard I recently received from the Poetry Project, under the supervision of Jone MacCulloch.

Isn't Rylee an impressive first grade artist? Wow!


I do hope Coco doesn't get up to too much mischief in my pocket!
You can read more student postcards I received in past years by clicking HERE.


If you missed last week's wrap-up celebration of poems inspired by My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice by Patrice Vecchione, you can find it HERE. Leave a comment on that blog post by 5pm today for a chance to win your own copy!

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

DMC: "Look into the Future" by Carol Varsalona




LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

Into the future, I stare
pondering
its
vast
unchartedness
pondering
a
new
normal.
Pondering,
I stare into the future.


© 2020 Carol Varsalona. All rights reserved.

This poem is part of a skinny poem series. Read more at Beyond LiteracyLink.

 
This month we featured three challenges from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione:
"These are the Hands": Write about the place that empathy has in your life—a time you offered compassion to another or a time it was freely given to you.

"Lost and Found": Write about a time you lost something or somebody. 

And "Into the Future: Take Yourself There Now": Write about that place called future, as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find.

Click on the challenge titles above for more details about each one and/or visit our end-of-month celebration to read other poems contributed. Submit your poem by 5:00 pm on Thursday, April 30th, to be entered in a random drawing for a copy of this outstanding guide to writing poetry, courtesy of Seven Stories Press.





Monday, April 27, 2020

DMC: "Future Friends" by Janie Lazo




FUTURE FRIENDS

Someday soon I will
shake the hand of my neighbor
and say, Come right in

© 2020 Janie Lazo. All rights reserved.



This month we featured three challenges from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione:
"These are the Hands": Write about the place that empathy has in your life—a time you offered compassion to another or a time it was freely given to you.

"Lost and Found": Write about a time you lost something or somebody. 

And "Into the Future: Take Yourself There Now": Write about that place called future, as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find.

Click on the challenge titles above for more details about each one and/or visit our end-of-month celebration to read other poems contributed. Submit your poem by 5:00 pm on Thursday, April 30th, to be entered in a random drawing for a copy of this outstanding guide to writing poetry, courtesy of Seven Stories Press.





Thursday, April 23, 2020

April DMC Wrap-Up Celebration + Giveaway


"leak of ideas" by Anja Mexicola
(click on image to enlarge)


I hope you enjoyed our new Lessons from the Bookshelf series this month! Many thanks to Patrice Vecchione for allowing me to debut the series with an in-depth look at My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth (Seven Stories Press, 2020). I know I learned an awful lot. I hope I was able to pass along some of my enthusiasm to you.



If you missed any of my posts about this insightful and comprehensive book about writing poetry and living the poet's life, please click on the following links:

Introduction and Part I—Poetry's Calling: Finding Yourself on Paper

Part II—"If One Part Were Touched, the Whole World Would Tremble": Writing Poetry from the Inside Out

Part IV—"How Might the Impossible Be?": Getting Your Poems Out There

I also had the pleasure of sharing three writing prompts from Part III—Who Said You Couldn't Say That?: Twenty-Five Poetry Writing Suggestions in Twenty-One Short Chapters:


barbara w

"These are the Hands": Write about the place that empathy has in your life—a time you offered compassion to another or a time it was freely given to you.


patrice-photographiste



"Lost and Found": Write about a time you lost something or somebody. 



sammydavisdog


And "Into the Future: Take Yourself There Now": Write about that place called future, as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find.






Although there wasn't a lot of shouting in your responses . . .

Charles Lam

 or shattering, for that matter . . .

chiaralily

there was certainly some whispering . . .

Marc Cooper

also singing, praying, crying, imagining, and a whole lot of caring and truth-telling.

Elaine Moore


It's tough times, these days. There's no doubt about it. But it helps to know we have each other to lean on, don't you think?


allywin13

I appreciate everyone who dug deep to write from your hearts this month! Some of your contributions seemed like they would suit more than one writing prompt, but I sorted them as best I could. If I placed yours incorrectly, contact me via email—todayslittleditty (at) gmail (dot) com. I'm happy to make changes.

Scroll through the poems below or CLICK HERE to open a new tab.

Made with Padlet


Has National Poetry Month been keeping you busy? Did you miss one of the challenges? April's not over yet! This week I invite you to write a poem for any of the three challenges presented this month. You have until Thursday, April 30th, to add your poem to the collection. You'll find the padlet and more information about each of the prompts HERE (for empathy poems), HERE (for lost things and people) and HERE (for imaging the future). I will then move your poem to the wrap-up presentation.




Participants in this month's challenges will automatically be entered to win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione, courtesy of Seven Stories Press (US addresses only). One entry per participant, not per poem.

Alternatively, you may enter the giveaway by commenting below or sending an email to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject "my shouting giveaway." All poem contributions, comments, and emails must be received by 5:00pm on Thursday, April 30th. If you contribute a poem and a comment, you will receive two entries in total. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced next Friday, May 1st, when we reveal a new Reader Spotlight and our next DMC challenge.

Join Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering for a poem inspired by Henry David Thoreau, the latest addition to the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, and, of course, this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

DMC: "Come Future" by Michelle Kogan




COME FUTURE

Come to me future
Come to me now
through this tainted
coronavirus time

Conjure up mystery–
Let my mind slip in between
imagination and land
gently with wonder

Let us walk together welcoming human compassion
like we’ve never seen before

Let us become our earth’s eager caretakers
like we’ve never been before

Let us hold education up high offering her
to all wanting hearts with equal access

Let us wrap our healthcare warmly around all
shoulders within reach of each individual

Let us embrace and honor our diversities,
and school naysayers with compassion

Let us support and encourage creative arts
for all to participate, enrich in, and grow

Let altruistic acts of humanity run rampant,
become common place, and cherished

Let us breathe in hope,
and breathe out possibility

In depths of despair and darkness of humanity,
remind us to breathe, remember, and dream our passions…
Come to me future
Come to me now

© 2020 Michelle Kogan. All rights reserved.



Our final challenge from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione (Seven Stories Press, 2020) is to write a poem about the future as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find. Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our April 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.
 




Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Two Line Tuesday: Edgar Allan Poe






Charles Rodstrom


It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, 
we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

– Edgar Allan Poe



Monday, April 20, 2020

DMC: "At the Pond" by Catherine Flynn




AT THE POND

Someday soon
I’ll take your hand
and we’ll walk to the pond.

Careful where you step!
A baby turtle, no bigger than a quarter,
is lumbering toward the pond, too.

When he arrives,
he’ll slip into the water
to forage for algae
and insects.

When we arrive,
we’ll sit on the bank
keeping our eyes peeled.
Maybe he’ll climb onto a log
to bask in the warm sun
after his meal.

Or maybe a heron will alight
on the pond’s far edge,
where the brook flows in.
You’ll grow restless
as she tiptoes on her stick-like legs,
uncurling her slender neck,
thrusting her bill
into the murky water,
aiming for a fish.

Time for lunch? you wonder.
Time for lunch, I nod.

Hand in hand,
we’ll leave the pond.
Someday soon.
 

© 2020 Catherine Flynn (draft). All rights reserved.

For the back story of this poem, visit Reading to the Core.


Our final challenge from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione (Seven Stories Press, 2020) is to write a poem about the future as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find. Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our April 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.





Thursday, April 16, 2020

Lessons from the Bookshelf: My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice (Part 3)



Here we are halfway through National Poetry Month (already!) and two-thirds of the way through our in-depth look at Patrice Vecchione's newly released instructional book about writing poetry:

Purchase within the next 90 days at the Seven Stories Press website and 10%
will go to the Book Industry Charitable Fund (BINC) to support independent
bookstores during the COVID-19 crisis.

If you missed either of my previous posts about this insightful book, you can click on the following links to catch up:

          Part I—Poetry's Calling: Finding Yourself on Paper

          Part II—"If One Part Were Touched, the Whole World Would Tremble": 
          Writing Poetry from the Inside Out

Part III is comprised of 25 writing prompts (I've shared one in each of my posts thus far, with another at the end of today's post), so let's jump ahead to the next jam-packed section.


PART IV

"How Possible Might the
Impossible Be?": Getting Your 
Poems Out There

. . . some of the more practical aspects
of writing poetry, getting your poems into the world
and living the poet's life.


Part IV opens with some solid advice about success and failure.
At first, success is in the writing of poems. Questions like “Is this a good poem?” come later. That way, you learn with freedom and curiosity how to do a new thing.
Pretty straightforward, right? Makes sense. But when it comes to failure, Vecchione's advice is more counterintuitive. She encourages the reader to view failure as "what a poet is supposed to do." It is, Vecchione explains, "the truth of the writing experience. To be strong as a writer, you have to try things out and to dare." By practicing and stretching ourselves we are increasing our skill, honing our vision, developing our style, and progressing in other significant ways.

After writing a poem, she recommends giving the draft time to rest. Getting some space from the poem allows us to come back to it with fresh eyes and a reader's objectivity.
Here’s what I look for: Does the poem make something happen in my body? Does it startle or cause tears to come to the edges of my eyes? Make me angry, poem! Make me fall in love. A poem that causes me to think anew, or that reminds me of something important I’d forgotten, is the poem I want to read.
She stresses the importance of reading the poem aloud.
When I do that, at some point along the way, a buzzer in my head may go off. So, I reread the line that caused that awful noise. If it goes off again, that indicates something in the line is off. That buzzer is spot-on in informing me of when I’m being disingenuous or unclear. It informs me the poem needs more work.
Vecchione offers pointers for editing and titling poems, and even some tips about how to ask for specific, helpful feedback from trustworthy readers (family members, friends, critique partners, etc). She goes on to say, however, that some poems, no matter how hard we work on them, may never be finished. These are the "failures" mentioned earlier—the stumbling blocks that lead to new poems along the road to success.

Once we have been writing a while and become more confident with our poet self, we might decide to take things to the next level—let our poems out of our notebooks to enjoy a life in the world. This section of the book, plus some poetry resources and submission opportunities in Part V, will help you choose where to send your poems (not all journals and contests are legit!) and/or how to create and publish a chapbook or poetry manuscript.

One of the things I like best about this section is that Vecchione never comes off as glib or overly optimistic. She stresses that "rejection is as much a part of the writing process as commas and periods." When sending out poems to magazines and journals, or chapbooks and full poetry manuscripts to traditional publishers, it's important to remember that editors are critiquing your poems, not you. If your skin is not as thick as you might like, consider alternatives to traditional publishers. Vecchione offers advice and resources for those, as well. The bottom line: "This is your art form, so devise ways to share your work that fit who you are."

The last few chapters of Part IV focus on living the poet's life. Most poets cannot support themselves by writing poetry alone, but with determination and creativity, you can find your way. Vecchione offers a poetic license (literally, to photocopy and keep in your wallet) in case you might need one in an awkward or heated moment with someone who might not appreciate what you have to say. But the most important gift she offers is encouragement and confidence to do what you love and are already compelled to do.
Beyond any other reason, write poems because you are engaged and curious, because you love the surprising leaps of imagination, because you have things to say, and because the act of writing poems changes you—there’s that joy again when you unfold the piece of paper with your new poem on it, read it, find yourself and part of the world in those phrases, slip it back into the pocket of your jeans, and smile because you realize nothing’s the same as it was before.

This week's challenge . . .

For this week's challenge, I've selected "Into the Future: Take Yourself There Now" (Chapter 53) from Part III of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice. Patrice writes:  

Is the future a place you wish you could arrive at now? I remember feeling that way. Or maybe here and now is fine. For the length of a poem, venture into that place called future, as you imagine it; peer into its unknown terrain, and see what you find.  

My student Rachel B. wrote:
The future is as blurry
as when you splash water
and try to see your reflection
And another student, Karen Amundson, wrote:
Future is inside me,
right beyond this storm of hope.
How do you see your future? Is it also just beyond a storm of hope?

You may also respond to this month's first challenge or second challenge if you prefer.

All excerpts in this post are copyright © 2020 by Patrice Vecchione, from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry and Speaking Your Truth, used with permission by Seven Stories Press.


HOW TO PARTICIPATE

You'll find the padlet embedded below. Add your poem in response to this prompt or scroll through to read what others are contributing. By posting on the padlet, you are also granting me permission to feature your poem on Today's Little Ditty.

If you have not participated in a challenge before, please send me an email at TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com so that I can contact you, if necessary.

HOW TO POST YOUR POEM
In the lower right corner of the padlet you'll see a pink dot with a plus sign. Click on it to open a text box. I find it works best to type your title on the title line and paste the rest of your poem where it says "Write something...". Single click outside the text box when finished. This board is moderated to prevent spam. Once your poem is approved, it will appear publicly.

PROTECT YOUR COPYRIGHT
Remember to include your name as author of any work that you post!

TEACHERS, it's great when students get involved! Ditty of the Month Club challenges are wonderful opportunities to learn about working poets and authors while having fun with poetry prompts. Thank you for spreading the word! For children under 13, please read my COPPA compliance statement in the sidebar to the right.

BLOGGERS, thank you for publishing your poems on your own blogs–I love that! Please let me know about it so I can share your post. Also remember to include your poem (or a direct link to your post) on the padlet.

For best viewing, click HERE to open this padlet in a new tab.

Made with Padlet


Last week's challenge to write about a time you lost something or somebody resonated with a few, but scared off others. Perhaps the prompt was not the best choice given the state of the world right now, but I applaud those of you who responded. On the blog, I featured a Two Line Tuesday on the topic, as well as poems by Mindy Gars Dolandis and Kay Jernigan McGriff. You can read others on the padlet, including one or two new poems for the previous week's challenge. Join us next week for our end of month celebration and giveaway!


It's not too late to follow and participate in National Poetry Month projects!
 You’ll find the NPM roundup at Jama's Alphabet Soup.


Join Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone for a nourishing repast of homemade bread and poetry at this week's Poetry Friday roundup.



DMC: "A Story Lost" by Kay Jernigan McGriff




A STORY LOST

I wander
through the shelves
looking for a story
I lost somewhere
among the stacks
of stories
I devoured.
It’s an old-fashioned
story, with children
and a pony pulling
a cart through
summer mornings.
There might have been
strawberries or blackberries
kissed by the sun
and probably
a rambunctious mutt
bounding through a meadow.
I look for my lost story,
pulling books off the shelves
and flipping through pages,
but no one can tell me
its title
as I wander
through the shelves.


© 2020 Kay Jernigan McGriff. All rights reserved.

For the back story of this poem, visit A Journey Through the Pages.


Our second of three challenges from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione (Seven Stories Press, 2020) is to write a poem about a time you lost something or somebody. Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our April 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.





Wednesday, April 15, 2020

DMC: "ALS" by Mindy Gars Dolandis



ALS

Your adventuresome disposition
craved more than Egypt, Hungary, Panama
An unchosen, formidable new journey:
Hello Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Fourteen months, twenty-two days of living hell,
cane, wheelchair, six doctors, two hospitals

You lay optimistic, courageous,
very much alive albeit functions ceased
The enemy within seized all motor skills,
vocalization, respiration, deglutition
As I watched you slowly deteriorate,
your shining spirit beamed through weary eyes

You drifted off to eternity
I stood beneath a sea of black umbrellas
as we honored a life well-lived and well-loved,
the mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, friend, acquaintance,
your presence whispering in the April wind
and the angels crying tears of rapture 

© 2020 Mindy Gars Dolandis. All rights reserved.


Our second of three challenges from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione (Seven Stories Press, 2020) is to write a poem about a time you lost something or somebody. Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our April 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.




Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Lessons from the Bookshelf: My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice (Part 2)



Welcome back to Lessons from the Bookshelf and our deep dive into Patrice Vecchione's newly released instructional book for teens (and older):

Purchase within the next 90 days at the Seven Stories Press website and 10%
will go to the Book Industry Charitable Fund (BINC) to support independent
bookstores during the COVID-19 crisis.

Last week I introduced you Part I: "Poetry's Calling: Finding Yourself on Paper." (If you missed it, you can catch up HERE.) This week we'll be taking a closer look at Part II.


PART II

"If One Part Were Touched, the
Whole Would Tremble": Writing
Poetry from the Inside Out

This section will give you an in-depth look
at poetry's components.


"If one part were touched, the whole would tremble" is attributed to poet William Stafford. According to Vecchione, it describes what we all should strive for before considering a poem "complete." Like a spider web that quivers when one part of its delicate fabric is disturbed, a strong poem is more than the sum of its parts. As poets, our goal should be to ensure that every single word in a poem has a relationship to every other word.

What draws so many of us to writing poetry is a love of words, and that's where this section begins, with a chapter called "Loving Words."
Is it a word’s meaning or its sound that woos you? Maybe it’s the way the word feels in your mouth when you speak it. Some words are smooth. Others are ice that won’t melt. Certain words inflame me; I want to spit them out. Some words hiss; others stammer. Some tell truths we’re not able to hear.
The next chapter explores what makes a poem a poem. Vecchione's favorite definition of poetry is "a picture made out of words," but she goes on to explain that a poem does not recreate an experience, it becomes something new—something that holds its own, where every word carries weight.
If a poem were a simple mathematical equation, it wouldn’t be 1 + 1 = 2; it would be butterfly + mountain = the first moment I saw you. A poem often takes leaps like Superman, “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Not everything is explained but somehow the poem isn’t missing anything. That is its integrity.
After that, Part II examines the various forms poetry can take, the essential element of sound in poetry, and what we see—the shape of a poem. Vecchione gets into nitty-gritty details like stanzas, line breaks, and punctuation, but also explores the character of a poem—its voice and style. She discusses similes and metaphors (with splendid examples), and the importance of choosing specific and unpredictable sensory words over more abstract adjectives:
Abstract adjectives such as “nice,” “pretty,” and “wonderful” aren’t actually nice, pretty, or wonderful. They’re vague and, in poetry, leave too much up to the interpretation of a reader. When a poem requires a reader to read it a few times, it should be to understand the poem’s complexity, not to try to decipher its meaning because the poet hasn’t done his job.
In the final chapters of Part II, Vecchione suggests some other considerations to help readers become better poets. She encourages poem memorization, for example, personalizing your writing space, and how tools of the trade can influence what you write. She closes with "Rules You'll Love to Follow"—a handful of helpful (and somewhat surprising) recommendations, including "what you write doesn't have to make sense," "trust your imagination," "don't plan what you're going to say," "spelling, punctuation, grammar, and neatness do not matter in a first (or second) draft," and "protect your vision."

Ready to put what you've learned into practice?


This week's challenge . . .

For this week's challenge, I've selected "Lost and Found" (Chapter 37) from Part III of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice. Patrice suggests that every time you lose something, something else is found. She describes a time when she had a garage sale to sell some of her mother's possessions several months after her passing. There was a green cloisonné jar that, from the moment the buyer walked away with it, she regretted selling. When the lost jar found its way into a poem, however, it gained more value than it had originally.


Here is this week's prompt in Patrice's own words:

Have you ever lost an object that was important to you, maybe when you too were quite young? How’d you cope with that loss? Was the item dropped or was it taken from you?

Write about a time you lost something or somebody. Start the poem in the present tense, as though it were happening right now. That will return the experience to you, giving it an immediacy that writing in the past tense won’t. But if that feels too close, try writing in the second or third person and see where that takes you. 

You also may respond to last week's challenge if you prefer.

All excerpts in this post are copyright © 2020 by Patrice Vecchione, from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry and Speaking Your Truth, used with permission by Seven Stories Press.


HOW TO PARTICIPATE

You'll find the padlet embedded below. Add your poem in response to this prompt or scroll through to read what others are contributing. By posting on the padlet, you are also granting me permission to feature your poem on Today's Little Ditty.

If you have not participated in a challenge before, please send me an email at TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com so that I can contact you, if necessary.

HOW TO POST YOUR POEM
In the lower right corner of the padlet you'll see a pink dot with a plus sign. Click on it to open a text box. I find it works best to type your title on the title line and paste the rest of your poem where it says "Write something...". Single click outside the text box when finished. This board is moderated to prevent spam. Once your poem is approved, it will appear publicly.

PROTECT YOUR COPYRIGHT
Remember to include your name as author of any work that you post!

TEACHERS, it's great when students get involved! Ditty of the Month Club challenges are wonderful opportunities to learn about working poets and authors while having fun with poetry prompts. Thank you for spreading the word! For children under 13, please read my COPPA compliance statement in the sidebar to the right.

BLOGGERS, thank you for publishing your poems on your own blogs–I love that! Please let me know about it so I can share your post. Also remember to include your poem (or a direct link to your post) on the padlet.

For best viewing, click HERE to open this padlet in a new tab.

Made with Padlet


Last week's challenge resulted in some really lovely poems about empathy. Featured daily ditties were by Linda Mitchell, Angelique Pacheco, Fran Haley, and Margaret Simon. Kay Jernigan McGriff shares hers today at A Journey Through the Pages. All of this month's contributed poems will be featured in a wrap-up presentation on Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.



It's not too late to follow and participate in National Poetry Month projects!
You’ll find the NPM roundup at Jama's Alphabet Soup.


This week's Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm. Her National Poetry Month project, Roll the Dice, is well-worth a visit, as are the daily 5-10 minute writing lessons she's been recording for students.

DMC: "Palm Sunday" by Margaret Simon




PALM SUNDAY

These hands
weeding, discovered palms,
and wondered...
Will these old palms
make supple crosses?


These hands
cut long strips
of granite green.
A mind-memory of angle to knot,
thread through, criss-cross.

These hands
delivered simple gifts
to lonely, sheltered neighbors,
a churchless congregation
praying together. 


© 2020 Margaret Simon (draft). All rights reserved.


Our first of three challenges from My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth by Patrice Vecchione (Seven Stories Press, 2020) is to write a poem about the place empathy has your life. Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our April 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th, and one lucky participant will win a copy of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice, courtesy of the publisher.