Today's Little Ditty: autumn

Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

DMC: "September Garden" by Elizabeth Steinglass

September Garden

I pet the patient lambs ears,
squirt the cherry tomatoes
into my cheek. I check the milkweed
for tiny yellow eggs, hover near
the sky-blue morning glories
and remember my grandmother’s eyes.
I wait for hummingbirds to pierce
the scarlet salvia and spot
papa goldfinch surfing the echinacea.
Soon the garden will fade to beige,
and all I’ll have are the long grasses
gone to seed and the question
that sustains me all winter:
what will I plant next spring?

© 2018 Elizabeth Steinglass. All rights reserved.

Click HERE to read this month's interview with Naomi Shihab Nye. Her DMC challenge is to write a letter to yourself in which you ask some questions that you don't have to answer. (Please keep in mind that your poem does not need to be in standard letter form.)

Post your poem on our September 2018 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up presentation this Friday, September 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her latest collection of poetry from Greenwillow Books:

Monday, September 11, 2017

DMC: "Winter Wonderland" by Maria Marshall

WINTER WONDERLAND

Autumn brings change and death.
Every Fall, green hastens into a jumbled
kaleidoscope of leaves.
Marking Nature’s order for
peace and quiet,
rest, solitude, and time.
Under vast white eXpanses,
yielding to zephyrs.

© 2017 Maria Marshall. All rights reserved.

Click HERE to read this month's interview with Carole Boston Weatherford. She has challenged us to write an abecedarian poem.

Generally each line (or word) of an abecedarian poem begins with A and continues in alphabetical order until you reach Z. For this challenge, you may start and end with whichever letters you choose, as long as they are sequential.

Post your poem on our September 2017 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, September 29th. One lucky participant will win a copy of Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Eric Velasquez (Candlewick Press, 2017).

Monday, May 22, 2017

DMC: "A Season of Poems — a Quartet" by Jane Baskwill

A SEASON OF POEMS—A QUARTET

Poems in Winter

Poems in Winter are
Slow to rise,
When storms rattle the window panes,
And wind whistles through cracks,
They shiver and shake and hide undercover,
Not wanting to come out,
Not willing to leave their nest,
Until lured by the snap-crackling of a promise,
Drawn to the warming intoxication of the hearth,
Cold hearts melt as icy fingers thaw,
They curl up by the fire momentarily,
Poems in Winter
Make good kindling.

Poems in Spring

Poems in spring are hopeful,
They start as small shoots to be nurtured
And protected from the whims of nature,
Some germinating too early,
Catching the gardener unaware,
Some awakening from a winter’s rest
Only to die from joyful pruning,
Some growing rapidly,
Taking over their assigned space,
And spreading into others’,
Forcing their presence,
In need of shaping, tending, taming,
They seek attention, consideration, celebration,
Poems in Spring
Rejuvenate the spirit.

Poems in Summer

Poems in Summer
Are a procrastinator’s dream,
They lie about on porches or swings,
Or in the shade of a tree, dozing,
With their eyes closed against the brilliance of day,
When summer breezes blow,
They drift into neighbour’s gardens,
Waiting for someone else to find them,
Caring not for the woes of the world,
Nor if they should live beyond today,
Poems in Summer
Are lazy.

Poems in Fall

Poems in Fall
Explode with colour and embrace their calling,
They drop from leaf-laden trees
Without care or misgiving,
Coming to rest with joy and abandon
They are propelled along pathways and old railway beds,
Moving briskly with stalwart determination,
They gather in piles and heaps, on stoops and verandas,
Impatiently demanding to be,
Poems in Fall
Have an urgency.

© 2017 Jane Baskwill. All rights reserved.

Click HERE to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how writing (or a book) is like something else.

Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell, illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated by Claire Keane.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Finding my voice: YOU JUST WAIT (Giveaway!)

Moonlit by AReeeD

While I've always been creative, when I decided to channel that creativity into a writing career, suddenly the playing field looked different. For a long time I struggled with how to be proactive—to dial up my muse and direct the creative flow. Who am I kidding? I still struggle with that! But I've learned a valuable lesson along the way: inspiration breeds inspiration. Creativity is about making connections, following leads, trusting the journey.

You may not end up where you expected, but you'll always end up where you're meant to be.

When you lead a jam-packed life like mine—fueled by distractions and a never-ending to-do list—you can't afford to wait for inspiration to strike. You need to find it where it lives.

Buy it at Amazon.com

That's why I'm thrilled that Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong recently unveiled YOU JUST WAIT: A POETRY FRIDAY POWER BOOK (Pomelo Books, 2016).

Think of this book as your guide and companion as you set out in search of your own creative voice.

A mash-up between a poetry anthology, verse novella, and an activity book in the style of Wreck This Journal, tweens and teens are going to go ga-ga over this book. I should know, I have two of my own. At a time when they're exploring who they are and experimenting with how to make their mark, why not encourage them to mark up the pages of this book!

But why should young people have all the fun?

Although Janet and Sylvia may not have had this in mind, YOU JUST WAIT is also the perfect resource for those of us who, despite our "advanced" age, may be itching to write a novel-in-verse and don't know where to begin.

Hello! We've got your do-it-yourself verse novel workbook right here!

Find out more about the Poetry Friday series at Pomelo Books

The Vardell-Wong team have established themselves as experts at linking poetry with teaching and learning—you can trust them to know what they're doing.

At the core of YOU JUST WAIT are twelve poems from a previous collaboration, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School (an NCTE Poetry Notable), which are used as a jumping-off point. Janet Wong then wrote twenty-four new poems, weaving together a story about identity, sports, dreams, and frustrations, featuring a diverse cast of characters that young readers will be able to identify with on multiple levels. There's Paz, an Asian-Latina soccer player with dreams of athletic stardom, Lucescita, her feisty movie-loving cousin, and Joe, an older brother with dreams of his own.

While the story line, itself, will engage readers, for me, the magic comes from the way that the reader interacts with ALL the poems—outside poems, response poems, and mentor texts—on a personal level.

YOU are the one who sees the connection between them, hears the voices in your mind, and can write your own poems to weave those poems together to create a story only you can tell.
– from the introduction to YOU JUST WAIT (Vardell/Wong)

YOU JUST WAIT includes twelve "PowerPack" groups to guide you through the process of reading, thinking, writing, and responding. Aided by Sylvia Vardell's fun and helpful PowerPlay activities and Power2You writing prompts, you have a winning formula for spurring creativity, making connections, and allowing your own words and ideas to flow.

Come with me on a power walk through PowerPack 6 and I'll show you what I mean.