Posts Tagged ‘Ethical ELA’

Slice of Life: A Place at the Table

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Ethical ELA, Linda Mitchell, scientific method poem on April 26, 2022| 14 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

My friend and fellow writing group member Linda Mitchell led the writing prompt for #verselove at Ethical ELA yesterday. She directed us to use the steps in the scientific method to craft a poem. As many of you know, my father died on Friday morning. If you follow my blog, I’m afraid there is nothing else so pressing on my mind than this and the care for my mother. Writing is healing for me.

A Place at the Table
You could make this place beautiful.
Can you float a flower in the vase and call it home?
Flowers, a white cat, a black dog, coffee brewing, what could be missing?
The empty seat at the table is cold, lonely.
I move over, sit in his chair, open the last book he was reading.
Time will fill the space at the table, even in the midst of absence.
There will be beauty again.
Margaret Simon, draft

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Wishes

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Writing, tagged death and dying, Ethical ELA, Lucille Clifton, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on April 20, 2022| 21 Comments »

This is a difficult time. My father had a stroke last week and is not recovering in the earthly sense. We’ve held holy vigil with him. It’s holy, healing, and horrible all at the same time. This photo is my mother and father’s hands.

I wrote this poem after Lucille Clifton from an Ethical ELA prompt. I know that this is a universal experience for some. Write a small poem in the comments and respond to other poets.

Wishes for Dad
i wish for peace
and a place to write
his thoughts
on a cloud
floating above
all this madness
of machines
pumping oxygen
taking pulse
counting heartbeats
i wish for the smell
of an open field
of wildflowers
where he can
run
free
i wish
i wish
i wish
i could take the cup
of suffering away.
Margaret Simon, draft

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NPM #10: Verse Love

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged definito, Ethical ELA, National Poetry Month on April 10, 2022| 4 Comments »

I led the #VerseLove poetry prompt at Ethical ELA. Follow this link to read some wonderful definito/ etymology poems. Playing with words is fun.

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Dandelion

Posted in Photography, Poetry, tagged #poemsofpresence, #smallpoems, #verselove, dandelion, Ethical ELA, Lory Landry, Mary Lee Hahn, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on April 6, 2022| 23 Comments »

If you are here for the first time, this post is a weekly photo poetry prompt originated by Laura Purdie Salas as Fifteen Words or Less. This is a place to play with words and interact with other poets. On Ethical ELA this week there were two different Verse Love prompts in which the writer took inspiration from another writer, a word or a line traveled from poet to poet.

Let’s play with this idea of poems communicating with each other. I will start us off. The first person here can take a word or line from me. As always, you may choose to go your own way. That’s fine, too.

Today’s photo is from my friend, first grade teacher Lory Landry. When she isn’t teaching, she is taking photographs. I loved the intimate perspective of this one.

Mary Lee Hahn is writing a poem each day about the climate crisis. I loved her poem about dandelions.

https://twitter.com/MaryLeeHahn/status/1511411818236985349

Wake up, dandelion!
Starbursts ready to fly.
Blow, spring wind, blow!
Margaret Simon, draft

The Progressive Poem is with Linda Mitchell today. Molly had a conflict, so Linda stepped up to add the next line. Thanks, Linda!

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NPM #4: Literary Festival

Posted in Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged #verselove, Books along the Teche Literary Festival, Ethical ELA, National Poetry Month, Poem Portraits on April 4, 2022| 1 Comment »

What a full weekend! The Books along the Teche Literary Festival was held in New Iberia. On Saturday, my friend, artist Paul Schexnayder and I led a children’s workshop. He taught the art part and I led the poem part: Poem Portraits. The kids wrote a bio-poem and decorated a cardboard face with Picasso-esque facial designs.

Outside in Blue Dog Park, there was a children’s authors area, but I decided not to sit and sell books this year. I had a good time supporting my SCBWI friends, hanging out at their tables, chatting and selling their books.

It certainly helped that the weather was probably the best we’ve had all year.

Blue Dog Park was the location of the Children’s Author Tents

For Ethical ELA, Gae Polisner and Lori Landau led the prompt with a suggestion to choose a line from another writer’s poem and create your own poem. They called it Collaboration Inspiration and it was probably the most prolific day for writing so far. Pop over to read the amazing poetic responses and to be inspired yourself. I borrowed my first line from Stacy: “Yesterday I wore only a sweater.”

Yesterday I wore only a sweater
Cream-colored comfort
in the morning chill.
I left it on a folding chair
in the children’s authors’ tent
where we joyfully greeted
a couple from Ohio
who loved children
and storybooks
and the craft of illustration.
A book festival can be an inadequate space,
sitting for hours
no sales in sight
pondering imposter syndrome.
Yet on this April day
I dropped my sweater,
tossed my discomfort to sunshine
and a circle of writers
who fed my soul
and warmed my shoulders–
no sweater needed.
Margaret Simon, draft

Progressive Poem is with Mary Lee today.

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NPM #3: Core Memories

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged Ethical ELA, memory poem, National Poetry Month on April 3, 2022| 2 Comments »

I am participating in Ethical ELA VerseLove. On Saturday, the prompt was given by Emily Yamasaki, a teacher in San Diego. She led us to write a poem after things I have memorized by Maria Giesbrecht. To me, scent is a memory maker, so most of my lines center around smell.

Things I have Memorized (randomly ordered)
The smell of coffee and pancakes on Saturday morning
How many turns and stop signs in the circle drive from Beechcrest to Sedgewick
Hum-buzz of a hummer at the feeder
First words
Stench of our house after the flood
Sparkle of diamond
Scent of his cheek on the pillow
Honeysuckle, Sweet olive, and Aunt Alabel’s perfume
Recipe for cornbread dressing
My childhood phone number (956-2526)
The Lord’s Prayer, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and Itsy Bitsy Spider
Margaret Simon, draft

Hummingbird at the feeder in my backyard. Taken August 30th. Photo by Margaret Simon

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Poetry Friday: The Beauty of One

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Ethical ELA, nature poem, wood ducks on February 25, 2022| 12 Comments »

Poetry Friday is with Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect

Britt Decker wrote a prompt for Ethical ELA’s Open Write this week inspiring us to use a picture book quote to write a poem. At the school book fair, I bought “I am One” by Susan Verde and Peter Reynolds. It made me think about our one wood duck hen who is nesting. We have a wood duck house with a Ring doorbell camera inside so we can watch the progress of our tenants. Each day the Ring goes off around 7 AM, and we look at the video to see her poking around the shavings and settling in to lay an egg. She will do this for a week or so, then she will sit on the clutch. After 28-30 days, the ducklings will hatch. That’s the most exciting part. Within 24 hours they jump from the box into the bayou.

“Beautiful things start with just one.”
One wood duck hen
flies in the house each day
to lay a single egg
one by one
until her clutch becomes a dozen
twittering,
chittering,
jumping
chicks.
Margaret Simon, (c) 2022

If you haven’t signed up to add a line to the KidLit Progressive Poem in April, go to this post.

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Slice of Life: Wildflowers

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Ethical ELA, Lafitte Greenway, New Orleans, open write, poetry, wildflowers on September 21, 2021| 4 Comments »

If you read my post last week, you know I have a thing for flowers. After visiting Petite Anse Farms and cutting my own flowers, the wildflowers that line the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans drew me in and begged to be clipped, collected, and given away.

This week is the Ehtical ELA Open Write and Monday’s prompt from Sarah Donovan encouraged us to write about “a shimmer of being alive.” My mind went back to the wildflowers I had cut on a walk with my daughter this weekend.

And So I Cut Wildflowers
I am taken by the little blooms
that peek from weeds
the ones on the side of the road
and want to carry them home
though I have nothing to cut them with
and frankly worry I will look like
a thief, a landscape destroyer, hoarder.
The store is open, so I rush in,
buy kitchen shears, the kind for deboning
a chicken–I debone flowers
touch them with my soft hands
hold them in a nest
where scent to scent
pollen on pollen
the warmth of sunlight
still in their faces…
I cut wildflowers
place them in the Mason jar with residue
of coffee grounds, leave them
on your kitchen counter
without a note that says
I love you
You will know
Margaret Simon, draft

And So I Cut Wildflowers, Margaret Simon

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Blue Moon

Posted in Photography, Poetry, tagged #poemsofpresence, #smallpoems, Blue moon, Ethical ELA, Molly Hogan, moon poems, one sentence poem on August 25, 2021| 6 Comments »

Every morning this week the full “blue” moon has accompanied me on my walk. I’ve taken cell phone photos that I posted on Instagram, but for this post, I reached out to my Inkling writing friend Molly Hogan. She came through with multiple moon photos for me to choose from.

On Ethical ELA’s Open Write this week, Tamara “Tammi” Belko led us in a one sentence poem prompt. You sure can pack a lot into one sentence if you try. I wrote mine by speaking into my phone notes app while walking. Siri often misunderstands me–must be the southern accent– and she thought I said “How are you” instead of “Owl echoes over the bayou.” I decided to leave it in the poem.

In the early morning light
of a new day when the moon still
hangs high while the owl echoes
“how are you”, I am tethered to this old
dog walking, wandering, praying.
Margaret Simon, draft

Please join us by writing a small poem (maybe just one sentence) in the comments. Leave encouraging comments for other writers. Thanks for stopping by.

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#TheSealyChallenge: Bridge the Distance

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged #thesealychallenge, Bridge the Distance, Denise Hill, Ethical ELA, Scott McCloskey on August 3, 2021| 2 Comments »

This month I am participating in The Sealy Challenge by reading a poetry book each day. Today’s book is An Oral History of Covid-19 in Poems gathered by Sarah Donovan of Ohio State University. Sarah curates Ethical ELA with an Open Write event each month. During the month of April, she posts a prompt each day. In the spring of 2020, the daily writing was a way for teachers isolated by the pandemic to connect through writing. We wrote poetry to process this unusual time. Sarah and her colleagues decided to preserve this work in an oral history project. Through that project, they conducted interviews by zoom and collected submitted poems into a collection. The book is free to read online or you can purchase a book copy for the cost of printing. (Link to Free Press Book.)

The thread that holds this collection together is the shared experience of teaching in 2020. Many of the poems are narrative while some follow forms.

I’ve chosen two poems to feature today.

Elms on Death Row

DENISE HILL

Three trees stand solemnly
in a row just as planted
nearly one hundred years ago

Each tendril root
tapped deeply into place
somnolently holding to earth

Craggy rough bark
like aged hands so many
life stories harbored there

Each now marked: a bright red dot
some roughshod city worker
sprayed just doing his job

Their days are numbered
soon hewn to stumps
then those ground flush

I place my hand on one
breathe in breath out
say “Thank you”

then the next: Thank you.
then the next: Thank you.

Lest they go from this world
unappreciated for all
they have provided.

Thank you.

I relate to this poem as I have experience the chopping down of trees for development. Haven’t we all? I feel sad for the marked trees. Denise captures that feeling well. I love how she decides to deal with this sadness, not by ranting, but by gratitude. This poem also holds together as a metaphor poem for Covid. The illness strikes some with little or no symptoms while others are very ill and die. Senseless deaths. Like the Elms, they leave behind their stories.

Washing Hands

SCOTT MCCLOSKEY

They say that all poems are
political; all poems are
an expression of freedom
against oppression are
innately radical. Their
mere “existence is
resistance.”

But not this one.

This one is just about me
washing my hands
and how sometimes I lose
count, so I need to start
over to ensure that
I’ve done it for the proper
length of time.

Hands lathered up, I stare
out the kitchen window
at the neighbor’s house,
at my neighbor who, although
it’s the middle of December,
and sure, it is unseasonably
warm, looks to be planting fake
flowers in the sills outside
of her windows.

This is the same neighbor
who was surprised when her
racist lawn ornaments were
stolen this past summer
when yet more videos
of atrocities and injustices
were going viral,

which, of course, makes me
scrub more vigorously, thinking
of the UPS package that came,
the actual reason that I’m standing
here in the kitchen —
Was that one thousand seventeen
or eighteen? —

So, I apply more soap from the
hands free dispenser, and
watch, transfixed, as she carefully,
artistically even, places various
colors and kinds together, creating,
to her mind at least, a pleasing
arrangement, taking more care
and effort to arrange these fake
flowers than she has ever
afforded her neighbors.

And I just wanted to wash my
hands, wanted to not (potentially)
infect my wife or myself, wanted
to simply go about my business,
maybe read a little, grade an essay
or two,

but I keep thinking
about the sad fact that
cultivation does take
time and effort and
persistence, and,
for some, it really
is easier to arrange
plastic flowers

than to plant
and nurture
live ones.

In Scott’s poem about washing hands, I appreciate how he sets up the poem as an ordinary moment, not a political poem “not this one” and yet, it becomes more and more filled with emotion, and in the end, imparts wisdom with an extended metaphor in “plastic flowers.”

I hope I can continue this daily blogging practice around a different poetry book each day, but realistically, “cultivation takes time and effort”, as Scott McCloskey says. I’ll take it day by day. Thanks for reading.

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