Poetry Friday is with Dianne at Random Noodling
I think one of the most enjoyable things about writing poetry is playing with words. I’ve been known to have multiple tabs open on my computer to dictionary and thesaurus sites as well as research sites. I’ll Google a word and get lost in the direction it takes me.
This week one of my self-assigned poetry writing activities was to play with the juxtaposition of words. Inspired by activities in the book Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing, I filled a few pages in my notebook with “words that need a friend.”
Then I wondered what I should do with these lists. I found more inspiration from Naomi Shihab Nye’s book A Maze Me. The poem “Where are You?” included this line that I borrowed, “I’m tucked inside each fresh paper page.” My friend Dani calls this “Taking a line for a walk” from her recent institute with the Montana Writing Project.
By giving myself the discipline of writing a poem every day, I am finding new and innovative ways to encourage my students’ writing when school begins again.
Pixabay photo
A Poem is Waiting
I’m tucked inside
each fresh paper page–
feathery poems
softly drizzled on Tuesday,
a perfumed whir,
blink in the sunshine
of your imagination.A poem is salty chatter
of newly hatched chick-a-dees
twittering in the nest of cloud-joy.A poem is a twister of whispers
rising on the weather front
of waving slurps of watermelon.A poem is a show-off peacock
emerging from the bush
of brain bellows,
a scented thunder
from afternoon rainsprinkling my face,
touching my hand,
this page.
Open gently.–Margaret Simon
Reflections on the Teche 