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Archive for the ‘Poetry Friday’ Category

Poetry Friday: Play with Words

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on June 8, 2018| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with Kiesha at Whispers from the Ridge

With more time in my day these days, I’ve taken the opportunity to join my friend Marcie while she sits at A&E Gallery, a local co-op art gallery. Marcie is a collage artist. We work side by side on art journaling. She does beautiful work and posts it on Instagram. She is currently working on a Postcard-a-Day project. She posted this beauty.

I have full on envy of her talent; nevertheless, I enjoyed her invitation to play with this medium. In January, I started art journaling in a book I made from an old discarded book. Each month I collage a few pages and work on a heartmap.

My son-in-law found an old electric typewriter at an estate sale for $15 and gave it to me this week. It’s quite a clunker, but it works. Michelle Haseltine inspired me to do typewriter poems. She’s been writing them every day for a while now. You can see them on Instagram and Facebook.

With my art journal, some words and phrases, and a sense of flow, I played with poetry. These are far from any kind of masterful poetry, but the point is to Play!

Do this! Allow yourself some open space and freedom. Leave behind the critic and the voice who says you are getting nothing done. Just be present and play!

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Poetry Friday: Linger

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on June 1, 2018| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is at Buffy’s Blog.

Summer is here!  I’ve been enjoying long mornings to walk and swim, pick blueberries, just lingering, not rushing.  I remember a Ditty Challenge a while back from Nikki Grimes about writing a wordplay poem.  The word linger keeps coming up for me.  I paired a wordplay poem with an image I took at the lake in Mississippi where my parents live.  A lake is a perfect place to linger.

 

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Poetry Friday Roundup: More than Meets the Eye

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing on May 24, 2018| 41 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is here!

Last month I invited Poetry Friday peeps to participate in a photo exchange, “More than Meets the Eye,” in which we’d send a photograph from our own geographic area for our exchange partner to write a poem about.  Please take some time to read other posts by clicking the Inlinkz at the bottom of this post.

I exchanged photos with Molly Hogan.  She sent me photos from a tidal pond in Maine.  I selected the photo of Greater Yellowlegs, a breed of sandpiper.  Here is Molly’s email explaining the setting:

Choosing is hard! I thought at first, I’d choose from one of my favorite places, but I changed my mind and am sending two from a new discovery. I often drive down to visit Popham Beach in Phippsburg, Maine. Driving back from walking there last weekend, I noticed a beautiful small pond? lake? off to the side. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before! At any rate, there was a small paved area I could pull into, and I did so. Then I noticed a trail and saw the signs: Spirit Pond Preserve and McDonald Preserve. It was such a misty, ethereal morning, that the name Spirit Pond seemed…well….heaven sent!

I did a little research at home to discover that Spirit Pond is a tidal pond fed by the Morse River. The small paved area I had used is to provide access to the pond for local clammers. As I checked a spelling this morning before sending this, I found an entire new rabbit hole of information about some runes that were reportedly discovered at Spirit Pond in the 1970s that were considered as possible evidence of Nordic activity. Then, there was some mention of those runes having possibly been brought to Maine by the Knights Templar along with the Holy Grail! Yikes!

Allaboutbirds.com describes the Greater Yellowlegs, “A common, tall, long-legged shorebird of freshwater ponds and tidal marshes, the Greater Yellowlegs frequently announces its presence by its piercing alarm calls.”

With this information and a prompt from Poets & Writers to write a love poem that uses animal behavior as a lesson in how we interact as humans, I wrote my first ever sonnet.

Spirit Pond by Molly Hogan

 

A Sonnet for Sandpipers

If I should hear alarming calls from you
within this holy place where we find rest,
I’d come to you like two birds often do;
We’d dance in water pools; close-by we’d nest.

From Nordic days, your charm & elegance
will lead a waltz across this Spirit Pond.
Where Knights themselves discovered sacred dance,
you kiss the sunlight at the break of dawn.

We’ll wade along a shore in misty haze
and build a nest on hummock safe & high.
In Maine, where nights are cool, we’ll spend our days
aloft on air uplifting wings to fly.

No fear how high or far away I roam
I know without a doubt, you are my home.

 

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

 

 

 

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Fractals in Nature and in Poetry

Posted in Creativity, Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , on May 18, 2018| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Rebecca at Sloth Reads.

As school winds down, I keep teaching.  I haven’t pulled out a movie yet.  I haven’t started packing (not significantly, anyway).  I want to savor every moment with my kiddos and want them to enjoy every moment left with me.

On Wednesday, we held our annual Gifted by Nature Day when all the gifted kids in the parish elementary schools gather in City Park for a day of nature, learning, and play.  This year our theme focused on fractals.  Do you know what a fractal is? Here’s a collage of fractals in nature:

Fractals in Nature

 

To follow up on the learning from our day in the park, I reviewed fractals and provided art supplies for students to paint a chosen fractal from nature.  Did you know that the Fibonacci series is a fractal?  Of course, we had to write fib poems.  I used this post by Catherine Flynn as a model text.  I wrote a model fib poem based on a fractal in nature.  Then sent them out to create.  Here’s a gallery of art and poems.

 

Lightning

by Jasmine, 6th grade

Boom
Clap
The sound
Lightning makes
Spreading through the sky
Sharing its color with the world
Fascinating us with its beauty, but deadliness

Peacock Feather by Lynzee

Fib
Bird
Feather
Natural
Beautifully swirls
Fractal stares from a peacock’s wing

by Lynzee, 3rd grade

 

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Poetry Friday: Sharing Poetry Love with Amy VanDerwater

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged on May 12, 2018| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

 

Students proudly read their poems to Amy VanDerwater.

My students and I spent the month of April glued to The Poem Farm.  What would Orion’s adventure be today?  What technique was Ms. Amy VanDerwater teaching us?

After a month of writing poems, we couldn’t wait to meet Amy in person, virtually. Before any question was asked, Amy asked my students to share poems that they had written.  The pride! The joy! And her amazing responses!

Amy talked about her writing process, showed us her messy notebook pages, and gave us wonderful advice for writing.

Mason asked her how to write rhyming poems.  She gave us all a wonderful lesson on rhyming.  You can use rhymezone or a rhyming dictionary, she explained.  Then she showed us a notebook page where she had written the alphabet.  She works through the alphabet to try to find a rhyming word with the meaning she wants to convey.  She emphasized that the meaning is most important, so if you can’t find a word to rhyme, try a synonym.  After our Skype visit, Mason immediately wrote a poem using the techniques she had taught.

I am holding onto Amy’s advice for my own writing as well.  She talked about how she wrote a sonnet, a form that I have yet to try.  But now I think I will.  Somehow, Amy makes me feel more brave about writing poetry.

One of her last pieces of wisdom came from a poem she read aloud to us.  Her reading was as if she were cavemom and we were here cavechildren whom she was telling to write so our writing will live on.

 

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Poetry Friday: Poetry builds Community

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday on May 4, 2018| 7 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales.

 

April came to an end on Monday, but my students are still writing a poem a day.  We are in the groove, so to speak, and we did not do all the prompts at The Poem Farm yet.  It was time to write metaphor poems, so we grabbed the idea treasure box and passed it around.  I suggested that the item pulled became the metaphor for the topic.  I pulled out a peacock feather and could only think of my youngest daughter’s blue, blue eyes.

Your eyes
are a peacock feather’s
deepest center blue,
hidden as you
fold into a dream
of who
you plan to be
when your feather
fan opens.

–Margaret Simon (c) 2018.

When we work together writing poems, conversations center around language and metaphor. When Chloe was writing a poem out loud about her favorite topic, cotton candy, Noah said ,”It dissolves in your hand.”  Chloe put that line in her poem.

Pink or Blue
Feels like a soft pillow
dissolving in my hand
Munching and Crunching
as I taste sensational,
sweet
cotton candy.

–Chloe, 2nd grade

Erin addressed her poem to one of her classmates who we were teasing when he stuck the word tree in a poem just to have a rhyming word.  Poetry builds community, even if we are clowning each other.

Tree

The wind rustles through the leaves
As a gentle breeze
Blows by
The bark scratches my hands
As I climb nature’s ladder
Up high the birds are singing
To the beat of the trees
Mother Earth’s Condo
Not a good rhyme though

–Erin, 6th grade

I want to thank Amy VanDerwater for being my co-teacher for poetry month.  I was a little shocked when I clicked over and found she has taken all her Orion poems down.  I understand, but I’m going to miss them.  She hopes to make them into a book which I will look forward to holding one day.

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Cover Reveal: Bayou Song

Posted in Bayou Song, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged , , , on April 27, 2018| 20 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Irene at Live Your Poem.

 

The time has come to let you all in on a very exciting adventure, my first poetry book for children, Bayou Song: Creative Explorations of the South Louisiana Landscape.

This unique book that combines poetry, nonfiction text, photographs, and illustrations with invitations to write and draw will be published by UL Press on June 18, 2018.

This week I wrote an anticipatory poem prompted by Amy VanDerwater’s exercise in writing striking words.

Publication Day

I’m flabbergasted
by anticipation,
dizzy with expectation,
nauseous
with nervousness.


I’m sidestepping
assumption,
antsy for predictions,
impatient
for beliefpower
to hurtle into
my psyche.

 

I’m dancing
with my destiny
with heebie-jeebies
and butterflies
splitting me into
a hive of many bees.

The day of publication is near.

–Margaret Simon, (c) 2018

I am so pleased with my illustrator, Anna Cantrell.  She was a delight to work with.  She is young and enthusiastic.  Follow her on Instagram at jarofpencils.

I’ve received a few awesome blurbs.  Love this one from Ava Leavell Haymon, former Louisiana poet laureate.  It’s probably too long for the back cover, but I want to savor every word regardless.

A love-song to the Bayou Teche, this inviting book creates its own universe.  I suspect there are multiple paths for us to enter that universe, but I am drawn in immediately by Anna Cantrell’s luminous watercolor illustrations, a gift to us from her precise observation and quiet love for her subjects.  And then Henry Cancienne’s photographs add another layer of beauty and understanding.  Then I come to brief paragraphs of information, enough to arouse curiosity but press me with too many facts. Then — what a treasure box this little book is! — Margaret Simon’s poems, each one born of minute observation and winsome appreciation of this  Bayou universe.  And nestled into all of this are Simon’s suggestions for writing a poem of our own in the manner of the one we’ve just read, and a little space right there to do so.  Experienced teacher, she suggests with a light touch and offers inviting tricks to make our writing easy.

This is a generous, generative book that gives and gives and does not make demands.  My fingers were itching to hold a pencil, a canoe paddle, a watercolor set, a camera. I leave its universe a little sad to go, but refreshed in my love of the Louisiana bayous and with my own creativity restored.         Ava Leavell Haymon

If you would like to participate in a blog tour, please fill out the form below.  Select a date that works for you (between June 18-August 18) In the comments, let me know your ideas for your post as well as your snail mail address.  I will make a schedule and send you a pdf of the book.

 

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Thank you for your response. ✨

 

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Poetry Friday: A Photo Exchange “More than Meets the Eye”

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on April 20, 2018| 26 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference

Photo by Molly Hogan, mbhmaine at Nix the Comfort Zone.

The world
inside a crystal ball
feels mystical
and magical,
a fairy tale land
where princes
fall in love
with glass slippers.

The world
inside ocean waves
feels treacherous
and terrifying,
a tossed ship
where pirates
set traps
for fair maidens.

The world
in a child’s mind
feels exciting
and thrilling,
a shore of seashells
where girls and boys
gather treasures
to share.

The photo above took my breath away.  I saw it on Molly Hogan’s blog and thought, “I want to write a poem about this.”  I also went to Amazon to buy my own crystal photo ball.  I changed my header image to one of the bayou with the ball placed on my deck railing.

I had an email conversation with my virtual-poetry-writing-photographer-friend Molly Hogan about exchanging photos and writing poems about them.  The idea grew into something we’d like to share with the Poetry Friday community.  We are calling it “More than Meets the Eye.”

I am hosting the Poetry Friday round-up on Friday, May 25th and would like to invite poets to fill out the form below and I’ll match you with someone to exchange photos with. I’m going to make an effort to match you to someone in a totally different geographical location. Your charge will be to write a poem about the photo you receive and post it on your blog on Friday, May 25th.  The photos should not include people. (People tend to complicate things.) There are no other rules except that the writer should give proper credit to the photographer and vice versa. Please sign up by Friday, April 27th.

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Thank you for your response. ✨

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#NPM2018: Happy Birthday, Lee Bennett Hopkins

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , , on April 13, 2018| 14 Comments »

National Poetry Month 2018

Poetry Friday round-up is with Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge.

 

Today the Kidlitosphere is celebrating Lee Bennett Hopkins’ 80th birthday.  Click the Poetry Friday button to go to Robyn Hood Black’s site to see more posts for this celebration. How fun to light up cyberspace with candles and confetti!

 

Lee Bennett Hopkins is well known as an anthologist.  He collects the best children poets and puts them together in unique ways.  His most recent collection is World Make Way. 

World Make Way

This book is a collection of ekphrastic poetry, poetry about art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The book opens with the following quote:

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

Leonardo da Vinci

This month I’ve been writing poems about my father’s art and this quote speaks to what I believe to be true;  My father’s art is poetry that is seen.

Lee’s poetry collections are a canvas for poets, a place to find words that can be felt rather than seen.  To write my poem today, I have chosen a line from Early Evening by Charles Ghinga.

Steamboat by John Gibson

 

Coming Home

We are coming home
stretched across a canvas of time
waiting for steam to rise

into still humid air.
We carry a load
of dreams from far

away where seas meet rivers.
We are born of the river,
her muddy banks birthed

strength to carry us
through toil and trouble
all the way home.

–Margaret Simon (c) 2018

 

 

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#NPM2018: Walking to the Barn

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, tagged , on April 6, 2018| 28 Comments »

National Poetry Month 2018

Poetry Friday round-up is with Amy at The Poem Farm.

Welcome to my National Poetry Month Day 5.  I’m writing ekphrastic poetry about my father’s art.

 

 

 

 

 

Country Barn by John Gibson

Here
we take our time,
climb through barnwood
and tell secrets.

Here
we find ourselves
wrapped in fieldgrass
and speak whispers.

Here
we lower our masks
stay safely sunfree
and hum memories.

–Margaret Simon, (c) 2018

Quote from PoemCrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge: “I feel safe because poems take me to a place out of normal time and thought, dipping me below the surface to where we all meet.  The poem speaks in confidence, the reader feels included, honored, and keeps the secret.”

The form beginning with the word “here” borrowed from Janet Wong’s poem Walking to Temple found in Lee Bennett Hopkins collection World Make Way. 

 

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