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.

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.

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.

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.

Lessons from the Bookshelf: My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice (Part 1)

Happy National Poetry Month!

When I was deciding what I might do this year to celebrate, the thought occurred to me that maybe I should actually take this month off to focus on my own writing. Goodness knows there are always a ton of wonderful poetry projects in April vying for the attention of readers and writers, educators and students. My growing collection of books about writing poetry is collecting dust, while other more pressing items rise to the top of my to-do list. Wouldn't it be nice if I used National Poetry Month to dive into one of those?

Olga Reznik

Then the light bulb went on. 

You, my friends, can take a deep dive with me! I'm excited to introduce my new blog series, "Lessons from the Bookshelf" where I'll be taking an in-depth look at educational books about writing poetry. And for those of you thinking but what about the monthly ditty challenge?, I've got great news. For this series, I will be offering up prompts from these highly recommended books for you to try out! We'll collect the poems on a padlet and celebrate at the end of the month like we always do.


What's more, this month I have something extra special to share with you. (Seems those dusty books on my shelf will have to wait a while longer.) Patrice Vecchione, coeditor of last year's Cybils Award-winning Ink Knows No Borders, was kind enough to provide me with an advance copy of her newest 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.

** Register HERE for a virtual book launch on April 7th, 6:00pm Pacific Time! **

Hot off the press, this book is positively bursting at the seams with advice and valuable information about what it means to be a poet, the ins and outs of practicing one's craft, and even how to get published. Pitched toward teens inclined to pursue writing, I can assure you that adults will treasure this friendly and nurturing 172-page guide as well.

My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice opens with a personal introduction which is both confessional—

Once upon another time there was a kid who was overwhelmed by her life. She needed a way to reckon with her confusions, those knotted and gooey ones that pressed against her. . . . At school she felt out of place, as though the oddities of her home life were visible. In front of most others she was quiet. But inside her head loud bees were swarming.

and inspiring—

Writing poems is a way to uncover what most needs to be uncovered—to loosen the tongue in solitude, to make connections that can’t be made in conversation. Poems are made of questions more than answers. They can withstand sudden shifts of direction, may be full of contradictions. Poems don’t shy away from incomplete sentences. A poem of no more than three lines can defy darkness or change the wind’s direction. 

The body of the book is divided into five parts, each with multiple short chapters. Just reading the section headings below will give you a flavor of the book's encouraging manner and comprehensive treatment:

1. Poetry's Calling: Finding yourself on paper
2. "If One Part Were Touched, the Whole World Would Tremble": Writing Poetry from the Inside Out
3. Who Said You Couldn't Say That?: Twenty-Five Poetry Writing Suggestions in Twenty-One Short Chapters
4. "How Possible Might the Impossible Be?": Getting Your Poetry Out There
5. Where to Go from Here: Poetry Resources

The pages are also peppered with quotations and excerpts from famous poets and writers, functioning to deepen the reader's experience through exposure to a variety of voices.

Because this book is particularly rich with information, I've decided to focus solely on Part I in this post, Part II next week (April 10th), and Part IV the week following (April 17th). On each occasion, I will share a prompt from Part III for you to respond to if you choose. On April 24th, the last Friday of the month, we will have a wrap up celebration that includes all of the poems contributed during the month and a book giveaway for one lucky participant (selected randomly), courtesy of the publisher.

So let's get to the good stuff, shall we?

PART I

Poetry's Calling:

Finding Yourself on Paper

Here's an intimate look at the writing mind and

what writing poetry can do for us.

The first chapter of Part I, "Why Write?," explores what gets you to the page. It includes this delicious quote from poet Sara Michas-Martin:

I want to write things down to honor and see things more clearly. To find a choreography for my thoughts. To keep time from sliding away from me. I want to make a simple fruit taste like magic again. Because a Jolly Rancher is delicious, but sometimes you want to experience the actual watermelon. You want to use your teeth to bite down to the rind; you want the cold juice on your chin.

Vecchione encourages readers to find their own "why."

The moment you speak your truth in a poem, you take the first steps to becoming a writer. . . . Writers write because we have something to say, even in those moments when we don’t know exactly what it is. What compels you becomes a piece of your “why I write.”

Subsequent chapters go to describe the beginnings of poetry, the mind of the poet, what writing does for us, the essence of imagination, and the art of listening. She describes how important silence is to the poet and that there are different kinds of silence that we need to become acquainted with. She talks of truth and facts at a time in our history when such concepts are being questioned:

When writing a poem, facts enter in through the unlocked front door (as they should be able to). Truth comes in through the cracks in the door or a broken window. A poem is after truth, and since you’re its author, your truth in particular. The poem and your life experiences belong to you. This isn’t going to be your father’s poem nor the one your best friend would write. It’s yours, and isn’t that nice?

She explains how we know what we know (through our senses and intuition) and encourages us to be present, invite inspiration, and respond to our complicated world within the context of discovering who and what we are. Learning to be comfortable with our own company is the goal, but Vecchione also examines the common pitfalls so many of us encounter—procrastination, what happens if we don't write, losing our way, writer's block, and our dreaded internal critic—as we get to know our poet within.


This week's challenge . . .

For this week's challenge, I've selected "These Are the Hands" (Chapter 39) from Part 3 of My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice. It's a prompt about empathy— something we so desperately need more of in today's world. The prompt was inspired by a poem by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, titled "These are the hands that could sand a wooden bench." Gutiérrez y Muhs is a poet Patrice  has known and loved for decades, a friend who would (and did once) give her the coat off her back. Here is the prompt in her own words:

Consider writing about the place that empathy has in your own life—a time you offered compassion to another or a time it was freely given to you. Or write about sharing food with others as Gutiérrez does with the men outside Kmart who wait there each day in hopes of being hired to sand benches or dig ditches. You might begin a poem with the words “These are the hands . . .” Or explore a time you felt a connection with a stranger or a group of strangers. A way to increase our happiness, recent research says, is to talk to someone you don’t know. Could your poem be a father watching with hope, the arms that hold a baby, or a smile full of metal teeth? Might it have the piquancy of hot salsa or wrap up the essential as a tortilla does? 

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.

For several years now, Jama Rattigan has done us a great service by rounding up poetry projects on offer for National Poetry Month. She does such a beautiful job! Stop by the roundup at Jama's Alphabet Soup to see what's available.

As for the Poetry Friday roundup, we're sheltering in poems this week. It's going to be an active month and we'll need all the sustenance we can get! Join Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe to find a poem that shelters you.

Classroom Connections with Patrice Vecchione

TODAY'S READ

Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience

Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond, Editors

Triangle Square/Seven Stories Press (March 12, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1609809072

For high school and up

Purchase at Amazon.com
Purchase at Barnes & Noble
Purchase via Indiebound.org




SYNOPSIS

A collection of sixty-four poems by contemporary poets who come from around the world that shares the experience of first- and second-generation young adult immigrants and refugees. Whether it’s cultural and language differences, homesickness, social exclusion, racism, stereotyping, or questions of identity, the Dreamers, immigrants, and refugee poets included here encourage readers to honor their roots as well as explore new paths, offering empathy and hope. Many of the struggles described are faced by young people everywhere: isolation, self-doubt, confusion, and emotional dislocation. But also joy, discovery, safety, and family.

Contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Samira Ahmed, Kaveh Akbar, Eavan Boland, Chen Chen, Safia Elhillo, Martín Espada, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Joseph O. Legaspi, Ada Limón, Emtithal Mahmoud, Bao Phi, Alberto Ríos, Erika L. Sánchez, Gary Soto, Chrysanthemum Tran, Ocean Vuong, Javier Zamora . . . and many others.


A PEEK INSIDE

self-portrait with no flag

i pledge allegiance to my
homies      to my mother’s
small & cool palms     to
the gap between my brother’s
two front teeth      & to
my grandmother’s good brown
hands       good strong brown
hands gathering my bare feet
in her lap

i pledge allegiance    to the
group text      i pledge allegiance
to laughter & to all the boys
i have a crush on      i pledge
allegiance to my spearmint plant
to my split ends      to my grandfather’s
brain & gray left eye

i come from two failed countries
& i give them back      i pledge
allegiance to no land    no border
cut by force to draw blood    i pledge
allegiance to no government    no
collection of white men carving up
the map with their pens

i choose the table at the waffle house
with all my loved ones crowded
into the booth     i choose the shining
dark of our faces through a thin sheet
of smoke     glowing dark of our faces
slick under layers of sweat     i choose
the world we make with our living
refusing to be unmade by what surrounds
us      i choose us gathered at the lakeside
the light glinting off the water & our
laughing teeth     & along the living
dark of our hair    & this is my only country

  - by Safia Elhillo

© 2019, from Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience (Triangle Square). Used by permission.


ABOUT THE EDITOR

Poet, nonfiction writer, educator and artist Patrice Vecchione has edited several highly acclaimed anthologies for children, young adults and adults including (Henry Holt) Truth & Life, which was named one of the best children’s books by School Library Journal and Faith & Doubt, named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. She’s the author of Writing and the Spiritual Life (McGraw-Hill) and Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life (Beyond Words/Atria), as well as two collections of poetry. For many years, Patrice has taught poetry and creative writing to young people through her program: "The Heart of the Word: Poetry & the Imagination.” She is also a columnist for her local daily paper, the Monterey Herald, and has published essays on children and poetry. About her, Adrienne Rich said, “Patrice Vecchione is one of those steady yet vibrant, serious and passionate temperaments who continually replenish our sense of communal creativity. In my country of possibility, she and people like her would be nationally honored figures.”

CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS

Why is bringing poetry into the classroom important?

Poetry is nearly another language within any language—it welcomes contradictions, partial thoughts, phrases instead of whole sentences; it asks questions and doesn’t need an answer. Poems welcome our confusion and tawdriness, our elation and despair. They are accepting of lies as well as truths. You can take liberty with language when writing a poem and embrace a sense of freedom. Through writing poems you’ll discover you know more than you knew you knew! Poems can show us the essence of a people, the heart of the matter unlike any other form of written expression. Not only is poetry important in the classroom but bringing professional poets is, so that students may interact with people who live their life by this art form, who love language and thrive on creating poems out of it.

How might your book be incorporated into an educational curriculum?

View (and download) the curriculum guide HERE.

Can you suggest a specific classroom exercise related to your book?

Read Safia Elhillo’s poem above, “self-portrait with no flag,” and consider what you pledge your allegiance to. Another word for “allegiance" is “loyalty.” To what are you loyal? What and who do you choose? What country is your “only country”?

What is a simple, practical tip for teachers when it comes to incorporating poetry in the classroom?

When it comes to poetry, there is never a single “right answer.” There are only many “write answers.”

Can you recount a specific instance of when poetry impacted a student or group of students in a positive way?

There’s a look that’s come over a student, a look to which I devote my life, when a kid is staring off into the middle distance, watching, as it were, for the words to arrive, and then the light turns on, and it’s visible. The head bows down to the paper and the pen takes off at high-speed. When a student finds their own answer to one of life’s minor or major conundrums or is inspired to write as they never have been, oh, now that’s something!


CONNECT WITH PATRICE VECCHIONE

Website: patricevecchione.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatriceVecchioneAuthor/
Twitter: @VecchioneAuthor
Instagram: patricevecchione

Look for My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry and Speaking Your Truth (Seven Stories Press) in spring of 2020.


Please help me thank Patrice for participating in our "Classroom Connections" series for National Poetry Month by leaving a comment below.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Have you heard? 
We're giving away a dittyload of books this month!

Check out the other Classroom Connections posts and giveaways on offer (so far) by clicking the names below.

• Eric Ode (Otters, Snails and Tadpole Tails: Poems from the Wetlands)
• Kip Wilson (White Rose)
• Carole Boston Weatherford (The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip-Hop)
• Skila Brown (Clackety Track: Poems About Trains) 
• Janet Wong (A Suitcase of Seaweed & MORE) 
• Debbie Levy (This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality)
• Susannah Buhrman-Deever (Predator and Prey: A Conversation in Verse) 
• Charles Ghigna (The Night the Forest Came to Town)
• Margaret Simon (Bayou Song: Creative Explorations of the South Louisiana Landscape) 

Digital art © 2018 by Miranda Barnes,
based on a line from "Ghazal" by Tracy K. Smith.

TO FOLLOW:

The best way to keep up with the Classroom Connections series is by subscribing to Today's Little Ditty via email, which you can do in the sidebar. I will also be announcing the posts on social media. Like me on Facebook and/or follow me on Twitter (also in the sidebar) to stay informed that way. Catch up with Classroom Connections posts you may have missed by clicking on the "It's time to INSPIRE" icon in the sidebar, or by visiting my "Poetry in the Classroom" board on Pinterest.

Jama Rattigan has rounded up a rousing collection of National Poetry Month activities, projects, and Kidlitosphere celebrations at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

Irene Latham has happy-making poems and this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.