Michelle Heidenrich Barnes hosts today with an announcement of the third collection of Today’s Little Ditty. I have a little ditty in the book as do many of my PF friends.
A few weeks ago I grabbed a poetry writing idea from Kim Douillard. She had her students make heart maps about a place they love and write a poem after Lee Bennett Hopkins’ City I Love.
I did this with my students. We cut simple heart shapes from plain paper and drew and wrote on them. Then glued them into our notebooks. Here’s a photo of one of mine.
On the Bayou I Live Near
after Lee Bennett Hopkins
On the bayou I live near– bayou I love– morning sun streams in wide golden beams gleaming a new day.
On the bayou I live near– bayou I love– afternoons bloom while speedboats vroom through sweet olive perfume.
On the bayou I live near– bayou I love– sunsets glisten, a lone heron listens as the hoot owl who, who, whos me to sleep.
My poet-friend and writing group partner, Molly Hogan, is a fine art photographer in her spare time. She lives in Maine and posts amazing photos on her blog and Facebook page. Sometimes her photos inspire me to respond in poetry.
photo by Molly Hogan
Dawn on the Marsh
Dawn on the marsh glows like embers, like the final flash of a torch lighting the tiny particles of fog rising ghost-like and dreamy.
High in the sky geese line up to honk their way south
In the distance, deer graze, tentatively perk their ears to your sound.
You do not feel the cold that numbs your fingers and toes as you click the lens of your camera
Today is National Author’s Day, and my friend and critique partner Linda Mitchell challenged our writing group, The Sunday Night Swaggers, to write a poem inspired by a favorite author.
When she challenged us, I thought of the most recent book I read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. According to The New York Times Book Review, this book is “Painfully beautiful…At once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative, and a celebration of nature.”
The poet in me was inspired by her beautiful writing about nature. I turned to a page and gathered words and lines to put together a poem “after Delia Owens.”
Sandbar
How quickly the sea and clouds defeat the spring heat, how the grand sweep of the sea and sand catch-net the most precious shells. How its current designs a sandbar, and another but never this one again.
She had long known that people don’t stay. This fiery current was her heart-tide releasing love to drift among seaweed.
How drifting back to the predictable cycles of tadpoles and the ballet of fireflies, Nature is the only stone that does not slip midstream.
Margaret Simon, found poem from Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Read my writing partners’ offerings for National Author’s Day:
I’ve joined in with a group of poets on social media writing to #inktober word prompts. It’s a great way to jot a little poem that keeps creative juices flowing. On Thursdays, Laura Purdie Salas faithfully posts an image prompt for 15 words or less. This week I used her photo of a red blooming tree and the inktober word, dizzy, to create an autumn haiku. Canva is my go-to site for creating image poems. Follow my posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And join in the fun!
My new middle grade novel, Sunshine, is available on Amazon. I can’t wait to open the box of books coming soon. See a review here.
Every week I am delighted to visit The Poem Farm. Amy Ludwig VanDerwater posts a poem and a student writing activity. A few weeks ago, I borrowed this post, The Real Me, and wrote I am poems with my students.
My students loved the activity. Many of them chose to post their poems on our kidblog site. I invited Amy to write comments. You should have heard them reading aloud their personalized comments; the pride in their voices made my heart sing. Amy has a talent for connecting to kids and finding just the right words to say. Thanks, Amy.
I wrote alongside my students. I put together my favorite lines to create this poem:
I am a lionness set in the stars, that drumbeat around a warm campfire.
I am a longing look from a silent child, a melody strummed on his guitar.
I am a secret scratched on a yellow sticky note. Don’t tell anyone who I am.
Waiting for the Harvest, by Mickey Delcambre. First place in the Sugarcane Festival Photography Contest
Ralph Fletcher’s new book, Focus Lessons, is coming out, so I took advantage of Heinemann’s offer to read a sample.
There are strong links between photography and writing. This is true in substance and process, as well as language. The world of photography provides a visual, concrete language (angle, focus, point of view, close-up, panorama) that is enormously helpful in teaching writing.
Ralph Fletcher, Focus Lessons
When I saw Mickey Delcambre’s photo on my Facebook page, I was compelled to write a haiku.
Equinox harvest– Slow down days, long resting nights Autumn changes time.
Margaret Simon, draft, 2019
On Monday, I talked with my students about the Fall Equinox. I was surprised how well they know the solstices, but they were less familiar with the meaning of equinox.
In New Iberia this weekend, there is the annual Sugarcane Festival, celebrated on the last weekend of September as harvesting begins. We only have to look out of the window to see the tall cane waving in the fields.
One of the Craft Lessons included in the book sample focuses on Mood. Ralph explains how mood can be expressed in a photograph as well as in writing. I look forward to finding more crossovers between photography and writing Ralph says, “Photography is writing with light.”
I put Mickey’s photograph up and ask my students to do a quick write about it. Our quickwrites are typically 5 minutes. Then we share. Sometimes (it’s always a choice), a quickwrite will become a poem.
Seeing the Days Change
I see the days changing around me, going from day to night and night to day the marks of tires only from the day before seeing the sun go down getting ready for the night, goodnight sun.
Breighlynn, 4th grade
Sugar
Sugar in the fields, still as a cane. Growing, oh so tall, ready for the harvest. Burning leaves make the sweet smelling smoke.
Can you smell the sugar? Smelling, oh so sweet. Have you ever eaten the cane? As pure as sugar comes.
A.J., 6th grade
This morning on my morning walk I smelled the sweet air that A. J. wrote about. One of the gifts of fall.
Poetry Friday round-up is with Linda at Teacher Dance
My students this year look forward to Poetry Friday when we read a poem and talk about what we notice, then try the form on. A few weeks ago we read Jane Yolen’s poem, “A Word is Not a Poem” that I had saved from her daily email poems. Having the form of her poem in hand, my students created interesting poem responses.
A Laugh is Not a Smile
A laugh is not a smile but it is a feeling inside you. You can laugh once but it’s best to laugh twice. laugh laugh
A smile is not a frown but it is a feeling inside you. used in several ways, to express love, and happiness. smile smile
Jamison, 4th grade
A Book is not a Word
A book is not a word , but a forest in a tree . Used in many ways , it can even be funny .
A book is not a poem You can only read it once , but best to read it twice . Book , Book .
A book is not a song , the words you cannot spin . Won’t know it going in you will though coming out . Tone , Note .
In early August, Molly Hogan wrote a post about titles and suggested that we use a title of a poem to spark a new poem. I took it one step further. I read the poem of the intriguing title and wrote a response poem. From Molly’s post, I clicked on A Poem for Pulse.
After reading the poem, my writing went on a roller coaster ride of response. It just flowed out. Here’s the draft with little revision. I’m not sure if it reads as a poem on its own, without the original poem.
A Poem for Pulse
Digging deep into the dirt of a poem about guns and death and people judging people was a line that caught my breath, made me gasp
for air because I thought at first the air was too thick to breathe through. I thought I knew the end.
This poem took me for a fool and made me question myself. Am I the shooter or the lover?
We must love one another whether or not we die.
The poet’s directive pointed to love, away from judgement, or criticism which is really only fear. Not giving in, an act of resistance.
In the end, there was kissing.
Margaret Simon, draft, response to A Poem for Pulse by Jamison Fitzpatrick
Our Sunday Night Swagger Writers Group has decided to post poems from a prompt on the first Friday of the month. Last month Heidi Mordhorst challenged us to definito poems. This month Catherine Flynn prompted us to write about a box:
Who was the owner of the box?
How did what is inside the box transform him or her?
Having acquired some things from my parents’ home this summer, I knew what box I would write about. My grandmother whom I called Nene died when I was young, between 8 and 10. I remember so much about her, her white-white hair, how she sewed beautiful Barbie clothes and even made doll furniture from cardboard, and how she loved butterflies. She had a pinned collection in a shadow box. But that isn’t the box of this poem. I had never seen this box before. It was tucked inside a cardboard box of mementos from my father’s childhood.
This is Her Box
that touched her hands so many years ago. A small brass box that fits in the palm of my hand. What did these things mean to her?
a tarnished silver spoon, jeweled pin, wire-framed butterfly, silver post earrings–
I put on the charm bracelet; Grands’ names in birth order become my connection to her.
All tucked into her box for me to find fifty years later and remember her touch.
The children’s poetry community lost a friend and a mentor when Lee Bennett Hopkins died on August 8th. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but in everything I’ve read about him, he was a gentle leader and proud father of poetry.
Among his many anthologies, I have Amazing Places on my classroom shelf. In it, Lee Bennett Hopkins collected poems about places around our country. His contribution was a poem titled Langston.
Though his professional writing was successful, it was the death of poet Langston Hughes in 1967 that proved to be a spark for Hopkins’s career of anthologizing poetry for children.
By Shannon Maughan | Aug 13, 2019
Amazing Places: Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Lee & Low Books, 2015.
While borrowing a few lines as well as the form of this poem and reading his obituary on Publishers Weekly, I wrote this poem for Lee.
His Dusts of Dreams after Lee Bennett Hopkins “Langston” for Lee Bennett Hopkins, 1938-2019
Who would have known a young boy of divorce, a poor student inspired by a teacher would find his footing in education–
from student to teacher to collector of poems, With greetings to all Dear Ones, he left his dusts of dreams.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 