Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
In the book “90 Ways of Community”, Kim Johnson writes about a quirky family tradition of hiding a Where’s Waldo figurine around the house for others to find. We all have quirky traditions. I thought about a quirky tradition we have in my classroom. I decided to use a haibun form.
I remember the day that Chloe wrapped the tail of Jack-the-lemur, a class plushie, around the bars of her chair and left him there for other students to find. From then on, magically around the first of December, Jack comes alive. He travels each day to a new space–hanging on the American flag, digging in the mailbox of origami figures, even riding a cardboard prothonotary warbler hanging from the ceiling. Where will he go next? Years later, my students wait for this month of wonder.
Who needs elf-on-the-shelf when there’s Jack-the-lemur? Quirky classroom fun.
A collaborative calendar for NPM with Molly Hogan.
Happy National Poetry Month! I’m excited (and a little anxious) to start a new blog journey today. Last month I wrote a post every day in March for the annual Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge. You’d think after 31 straight days, I’d be ready to stop. But the practice of writing gets better and in many ways easier the more you do it. I am joining a community of teachers, poets, and bloggers who commit to National Poetry Month.
For starters, take a look at the first line of this year’s Kidlit Progressive Poem with Mary Lee today. She is setting us off on a long road to an amazing collaborative feat, 30 days, 30 poets, 30 lines.
Suleika Jaouad has an email newsletter, The Isolation Journals, in which she prompted “The Open Palm.”
Your prompt for the week:
Close your eyes, and slowly trace the outline of your non-dominant hand on a blank page. Take your time. Pay attention to the physical sensations. The sound of pen on page. The feel of paper against palm, pen between fingers. Surrender any illusions of control. Any attempt at getting it “right” or “perfect.”
Write a creative intention inside your palm. Around it, begin writing things that will invite you back to your practice—encouraging words, activities that inspire you, different ways of approaching your intention, small steps to get you closer to your goal.
Outside the hand: Allow yourself to daydream about what lies ahead. Write about where your intention could bring you. What it could help you discover. Record any new revelations and realizations, dreams or ideas that you want to carry forward.
Reflect on what happened in your mind and in your body at each step of the process, and how that awareness can guide your creative path.
Suleika Jaouad
My Open Palm by Margaret Simon
This open palm feels like my opening up to this new month of writing daily, the practice of being open to what flows, without judgement, discovering the creativity that already lives in me. Thanks for being here. This haibun is from a prompt at VerseLove at Ethical ELA. I decided to abandon grammar rules and Flow.
Write, Just Write
Write fast she says without judgement keep the pen moving across the page you can do this with one hand tied behind your back standing on one leg let the flamingo in you blush with delight until the timer stops ticking then rest breathe in the feeling of success of soulsearching of secrets revealed in your own abandon you are in charge here Be Be Be who you want to be embrace her for she is yours forever.
Find a soft place to land your soft body sing yourself home.
The Poetry Sisters put out a challenge that fits well with this Thanksgiving season, a recipe poem. Thanks for the challengeLaura,Tanita,Mary Lee,Liz,Kelly,Tricia,Sara, and Andi! Find more of these poems tagged with #PoetryPals.
A Recipe for Dressing and Love (a haibun)
My mother made the dressing, the whole meal actually, but especially the dressing. Only Ballard cornbread mix would do, baked in a cast iron skillet to the perfect shade of brown. Sauté the trinity–onions, celery, bell pepper–in pure, smooth butter. Mix crumbled cornbread with vegetables, a sprinkle of sage, soak in chicken broth. I used vegetable broth instead the year I was vegan, but my children vetoed the change. Nostalgia for Dot’s dressing, an original recipe. Today I ask my mom if she remembers the recipe. She doesn’t. Whether evidence of memory loss or just the passage of time, I tell her,”It’s OK.” I open my recipe book, find the handwritten sheet of paper and begin, again.
Her cornbread dressing mixed with a heart of kindness– Recipe for love
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
On Saturday as part of the Festival of Words, I had the privilege to attend a small workshop with Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She led us through a number of writing exercises and ended with a discussion of the haibun.
From Poets.org: “Haibun combines a prose poem with a haiku. The haiku usually ends the poem as a sort of whispery and insightful postscript to the prose of the beginning of the poem. Another way of looking at the form is thinking of haibun as highly focused testimony or recollection of a journey composed of a prose poem and ending with a meaningful murmur of sorts: a haiku.”
Aimee added to this definition with two concepts: Aware, a Japanese concept similar to natsukashisa, a type of nostalgia with a fondness for what is gone but also slight optimism for what’s ahead and a sense of calm because this is the natural course of things. She also Nezhukumatathiled the form with the addition of scent. She spoke about scent as a way to activate the reader’s mind to a memory.
On Monday, I went to a former school to screen a student for gifted. They put me in my old room to do the testing and while the child took her test, I wrote this poem.
I enter the spacious classroom, and you are not here. So many hard days in masks and social distance defined our relationship then. Your desk is gone. The smell of pencil shavings is sharp mixed with musty-mold of an old school. Today I am testing a girl like you, bright and edgy with a little swagger to her walk. But she isn’t you. No one can be you but you. This chair, the small blue square that lost its cushion years ago, holds me again. I trip over its wobbly wheels wishing you were here to laugh at me. Where are you now? In another classroom, another school, same masked face, same suspicious eyes. I want to know if you are OK. I only ever wanted you to be OK.
Students come in Twist my heart into a knot And leave it longing
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She teaches gifted elementary students, writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 