Two Line Tuesday: Vincent van Gogh

"Dandelions in spring" by Virginia (Ginny) Sanderson

It is looking at things for a long time 

that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.

– Vincent van Gogh

February DMC Wrap-Up Celebration + Giveaway

MonikaP via pixabay

At the beginning of this month, Buffy Silverman challenged us to write a poem using combined or invented words. She offered up a recipe that involved combining nouns and verbs to create new adjectives, as she did in On a Snow Melting Day: Seeking Signs of Spring.

With nature as our test kitchen, how could we go wrong? 

tumblr.tastefullyoffensive.com

We added our ingredients one by one, mixing and stirring . . . 

"The cook" by Harry Whittier Frees

whipping up our words until they held their own . . .

"Barker was Busy in the Kitchen" by Harry Whittier Frees

the perfect amount of sweetness in each and every bite-sized poem.

ddraw at freepik

No doubt you will find something to your taste.

"A hungry bunch" by Harry Whittier Frees

Many thanks to everyone who participated, and especially to Buffy for cooking up such a satisfying challenge!

Scroll through the poems below, or for best viewing, CLICK HERE.

Feeling inspired?

If so, you have one more day (until Saturday, February 29th) to write a poem using combined or invented words. Post your poem on our February 2020 padlet and I will add it to the wrap-up presentation.

 

Participants in this month's challenge will automatically be entered to win a signed copy of On a Snow-Melting Day: Seeking Signs of Spring by Buffy Silverman (Millbrook Press, 2020). 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 "snow-melting giveaway." Comments and emails must be received by Tuesday, March 3rd. If you contribute a poem and comment below, you will receive two entries in total. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced next Friday, March 6th, when we reveal our next Spotlight ON interview and DMC challenge!

Karen Edmisten is sharing a beautiful poem by Jane Hirshfield about the "extra day" we are blessed with this month. Join her for this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

DMC: "Surf's Up!" by Dianne Moritz

SURF'S UP!

It’s a foam-splashing, wave-crashing, sea-thrashing day.
It’s a cold-battling, board-straddling, arm-paddling day.
So grab your wet-suit and be on your way.
Hurl in the curl cuz the surf’s up today!

© 2020 by Dianne Moritz. All rights reserved.


Buffy Silverman has challenged us to write a poem that uses combined or invented words. Click HERE for more details and to read this month's Spotlight ON interview.

Post your poem on our February 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, February 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her nonfiction poetry picture book from Millbrook Press:

DMC: "Strangers No More" by Janet Clare Fagal

STRANGERS NO MORE

The wave-dancing, endless crashing
water music welcomes me
to the sun-blistering,
crazy-quilted beach.
Where towel-unfurling placement is an art,
and undertow-racing, deep-hole digging children
scream f o r e v e r. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Their voices carried off by ocean breezes,
drowned out by seagull-screeching songs.
Where eager bathers dodge the sea-foamy shore,
and summer-heat's magic becomes a healing balm.
Where strangers share their bits of sand-tinged tapestries,
tip-toeing around with care.
 
© 2020 by Janet Clare Fagal. All rights reserved.


Buffy Silverman has challenged us to write a poem that uses combined or invented words. Click HERE for more details and to read this month's Spotlight ON interview.

Post your poem on our February 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, February 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her nonfiction poetry picture book from Millbrook Press:

DMC: "The Open Door" by Brenda Davis Harsham

THE OPEN DOOR

A brown cardboard package
ker-thumps on my porch.

The open door
creates a cascade.
Icicles scatter-shatter.
Squirrel-tail twitches
before tiny toes flee.
Brown birds heckle and hang
on twig-twanging holly branches.
Rabbits munch ice-crusted clover,
small, round eyes fixed. On me.

I give the cold package a shake.
And a tilt. Bump-whump.
My nose doesn’t quite freeze.

Inside, I slit packing tape,
but some part of me
remains outside
as if my soul is part hound
and the universe has shouted

“Squirrel!”

© 2020 by Brenda Davis Harsham. All rights reserved.


Buffy Silverman has challenged us to write a poem that uses combined or invented words. Click HERE for more details and to read this month's Spotlight ON interview.

Post your poem on our February 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, February 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her nonfiction poetry picture book from Millbrook Press:

DMC: "Maltese at Six O'Clock" by Mindy Gars Dolandis

MALTESE AT SIX O'CLOCK

Beneath a sun-peaching sky
mini Marshmallow stroll-patroller
surveys his territory
yippy-yapping at all trespassers
secures dominion over
his home, yard, and grass-kissed sidewalk
           
© 2020 by Mindy Gars Dolandis. All rights reserved.


Buffy Silverman has challenged us to write a poem that uses combined or invented words. Click HERE for more details and to read this month's Spotlight ON interview.

Post your poem on our February 2020 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, February 28th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her nonfiction poetry picture book from Millbrook Press:

Classroom Connections Encore! with Patrice Vecchione

Last Friday was an important day in the kidlit blogging community—the 2019 CYBILS (Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) winners were announced. 

For the poetry category, selection committee members were faced with the nearly impossible task of judging poetry collections for young children alongside edgy young adult verse novels. Not fair at all. But on the bright side, the finalists for this category were all well-deserving:

• Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir, by Nikki Grimes

• Soccerverse: Poems about Soccer, by Elizabeth Steinglass

• Other Words for Home, by Jasmine Warga

• The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, edited by Paul B. Janeczko

• Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson

• Dreams from Many Rivers: A Hispanic History of the United States Told in Poems, by Margarita Engle

• Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience, edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond

Two of these finalists were featured last year on Today's Little Ditty—Soccerverse and Ink Knows No Borders. I would have been thrilled if either of them won the CYBILS award for poetry, and wouldn't you know, one of them did!

 

to Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond 

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

Because of the recent recognition, I thought it might be a good time to republish my interview with Patrice Vecchione about how Ink Knows No Borders can be used in the classroom. (You can find Elizabeth Steinglass's Classroom Connections interview HERE.)

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.


UPDATE: My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice will be released on March 31st, but is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. 

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

I know February is the shortest month, but this is ridiculous! There's only one week left to go before our wrap-up celebration for Buffy Silverman's DMC challenge. Have you posted your word invention poem on the padlet yet? This week's featured daily ditties were by Cindy Breedlove, Rebekah Hoeft, and B.J. Lee.

Join Cheriee Weichel at Library Matters for this week's Poetry Friday roundup and a wonderful interview with Avis Harley. It's the second in Cheriee's series of interviews with Vancouver children's poets.