Greetings, Poetry People! Every now and then I one of my poems get to participate in a unique project. The latest of these is "Brownies: Baked-In Math," which was selected by Heidi Bee Roemer for her STEAM Powered Poetry list! That makes me an "Esteamed Poet" (hee hee), in great company with Poetry Friday friends Robyn Hood Black and Linda Kulp Trout and many other accomplished poets.
This poem was originally written for a Lee Bennett Hopkins anthology, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MATH, but he selected another of my poems for that book, which I still have hope will appear. Lee's esteemed fingerprints are on "Brownies" too. I'm excited to share all the great promo materials "the other Heidi" and her STEAM TEAM have developed. Here's a video overview.
The poems are written for a grade-school audience, have STEAM themes, and are available for older students to turn into videos which they can submit to a contest, with cash prizes for the winners! Find links to the contest poems here: https://steampoweredpoetry.com/contest/poetry-packet-download/
And now, here's my poem!
Brownies:
Baked-In Math
We wait until the pan is cool.
It’s time to cut them into squares.
How many across? How many down?
Hungry brother says, “Who cares?
“Just make them big!” he says. I try.
Dividing in my mind, I see
a tic-tac-toe board in our pan:
I’m multiplying three by three.
Nine big brownies--oddly nine.
I visualize another scene:
four rows of four instead, each square
much smaller. That would be sixteen
little brownies in the pan—
TOO small, I’m thinking to myself.
What about three rows, four columns?
That would make the product twelve...
An even number in the pan,
not too big and not too small.
I cut twelve rectangles with care
and then…we eat them all!
Thanks to Heidi Bee and good luck to all you contest entrants--let's make this video 🎵MATHEMATICALLY DELICIOUS!🎵
Greetings, Poetry People! I'm coming to you today from my first "travel gig" in little Williamsport, MD. It's a 75-minute drive from home, so I'm actually spending some nights away in the course of this residency, which includes dates in Oct, Nov and Jan for 5th, 4th and 1st grades at Williamsport ES.
Being able to go hither and yon to teach POETRY is a dream I had only begun to enact when I started this blog in 2008. I had returned from a year in France with my family (where I had, in fact, conducted a couple of workshops at the American Library and at an international school), but 2008 was the restart of my public school teaching career after teaching part-time in a nursery school while my kids were young. Here's a post in which I explain my blog's title to Daisy, then age 9.
SQUEEZE had been published, PUMPKIN BUTTERFLY was in the works, and I was still part-time, which would have allowed plenty of time to write the next book--if I hadn't gotten distracted by the state of school in my district. My good neighbor and I had blithely been sending our kids thinking it was one of the Very Best School Systems in the country, but when we both began teaching therein that fall, we looked at each other over Halloween costume making and said, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Our response was to devote the next 3 years to spearheading a long and arduous public charter school project which in the end was a most spectacular failure. Do I regret it now? Yes and no. At the time it seemed like a worthy investment in offering a wider range of
educational options in our county, and I met a ton of cool people, and old friends who trusted me got on board with time, treasure and talent, and I DID write a pretty good book. The application was 375 pages long and it was built around POEMS that expressed our vision. On the other hand, without really realizing what I was doing, I threw myself off the kidlit poet career path and hardly even attempted to submit further manuscripts until---well, last month!
In 2010 I went full-time in a kindergarten classroom (4 years), which led to the OIK series at my juicy little universe: Overheard in Kindergarten. In those days I could actually remember verbatim the interesting things the kids said in the course of the day and then write poems from them, even blog about them! Then came 2nd grade (4 years), and then PreK (3 years). In the years I've been writing this blog, I have taught approximately 340 kids for 10 months of their lives, plus probably another 500 or so in shorter-term, part-time workshop situations, either after school or during school residencies. It's not thousands, but it's a good number.
A few more numbers:
*I've written a total of 862 posts in these 17 years.
*862/17 = 50.7 posts per year--that's nearly one a week for 884 weeks. Gosh.
*Of course, some years have had way more: currently 2016 is the winner with 72 posts, which included one of the several National Poetry Month projects where I did almost daily posts.
*The year with the fewest posts (not counting the first year and the current year) is 2024 with only 29 posts, down from an already reduced 39 in 2023. I've moved gradually to a twice-a-month posting schedule, perhaps because building the box to contain my WHISPERshout activities turned out to be more fun but also way more time-consuming than teaching inside the prefabricated box of a classroom!
During these years I've also had the opportunity to slip quite a few individual poems into quite a few anthologies, journals, magazine articles, newspaper columns and other projects, both adult and kidlit. I'm always thrilled to respond to an anthology call, y'all!
The latest of these one-off projects is my poem "Brownies: Baked-In Math," which was selected by Heidi Bee Roemer for her STEAM Powered Poetry list! That makes me an "Esteamed Poet" (hee hee), in great company with some of our Poetry Friday friends: Robyn Hood Black and Linda Kulp Trout. This poem was originally written for a Lee Bennett Hopkins anthology, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MATH, but he selected another poem for the book, which I still have hope will appear. Lee's esteemed fingerprints are on "Brownies" too. I'm excited to share all the great promo materials "the other Heidi" and her STEAM TEAM have developed. Here's a video overview.
The poems are written for a grade-school audience, have STEAM themes, and are available for high school and college students to turn into videos which they can submit to a contest, with cash prizes for the winners! Find links to the contest poems here: https://steampoweredpoetry.com/contest/poetry-packet-download/
And now, a few shout-outs to the folks who have accompanied me on this journey since the early days:
*Robin Galbraith, my very first commenter, AKA A Nice Gal AKA Rowena Eureka, parent of a kid in my first nursery school class, member of my earliest critique group, fellow climate activist and now DAILY protestor in downtown DC, who really walks the walk as well as writing the talk;
*Laura Purdie Salas, who commented on my very first Poetry Friday post on March 27, 2009 and has been a deep resource on all things writing career since even before the blog;
*Tabatha and Laura Shovan (my local friends and champions), Linda KT and Mary Lee who all have been reading and commenting encouragingly for 16 of those 17 years;
*gratitude to Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, early appreciators of my work and supporters of so many new poets; Marilyn Singer, SCBWI mentor who invited me to ALA Poetry Blasts in 2010 and 2011 (and with whom I'll present at NCTE25), and Tricia "Miss Rumphius" Stohr-Hunt, who encouraged me with a lengthy interview in 2010;
*and of course, to the Inklings--Margaret, Catherine, Linda, Molly and Mary Lee--for making me a better poet bit by bit over almost TEN years now. 💞
And that's about all of this horn-tooting reminiscence that any of us can take for now! I really am grateful for this invention of self-published technology, for the best parts of the INTER-NET (think about what that actually means and embrace it). I'll close now with the ritual reposting of my bloggiversary acrostic:
Bloggiversary Poem, repaired
All threads and trains,
No rules, restraints;
No due dates, deadlines, or demands.
I get to choose. It's in my hands:
Voice, vocabulary,venom or valentine--
Each and every muse is mine.
Reach out deep or dive in wide; noisy soapbox, soft aside;
Sampling the past or hewing the new
As I talk to myself or write to you.
Revels, relations, revelations live here
Year after year after year.
original HM 2016; redraft 2025
Thanks finally to our host Patricia, who joins the revels, relations and revelations with some Reverie!
Blog Benediction:
May you all enjoy the same blog satisfaction as I have had the good fortune to do!
Yep, I've been blogging here at my juicy little universe for
SEVENTEEN YEARS!
But the celebration will have to be next week because I am just too loaded this week to do it justice. Thanks to all of you who have accompanied me along the way, and I'll see you next week with some numbers...
Greetings, Poetry Persons, from Leafield near Charlbury, England--ie, a tiny place in a country about which you could say, as the Bard has Helena say, "Though she be but little, she is fierce." We are here to celebrate the milestone birthday of my English spouse, who be herself but little and also notably fierce (as well as funny and formidable and named Fiona).
And if we are mentioning milestones, it is worth noting that Leafield near Charlbury is but 360 miles from St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh (which is not much distance considering one would journey up the larger part of Great Britain to get there). This is important because on this first Friday of October, the Inklings are responding to Margaret's challenge to write a short-form poem in response to an image supplied by another Inkling.
I was the lucky recipient of three lovely photos from Margaret herself, and the one I chose is her shot of St. Giles from an epic recent trip to Scotland. It is distinctly man-made, compared to the other nature photos she offered, and I can't explain why this one spoke to me or why it said what I heard, but here it is--not at all apropos of Fiona's birthday!
All I can think to explain it is how many opportunities we are offered lately to consider "the greatest this ever" and "the most that in history" and the fact that I'm currently in a country that's reportedly going to hell while at home we're in a "golden age." Mhm. It feels a little inappropriate to use the undeniably beautiful vaulted ceiling of St. Giles's to comment in this way, but there it is. The poem wants what it wants!
That's all I have time for this evening, jet lag and all, but you can enjoy all the Inklings' images and responses by clicking the links below--and thanks to Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme for hosting us this week. If you missed his post last week (as I did) about poetry written by people who aren't supposed to be able to write poetry--"non-verbal" people with autism--go back and check it out!
Greetings, Poetry People! I'm here today just to wish you an even-keeled Autumn Equinox for Sunday, and to point you to some really good news on the climate front--if we can keep it! Bill McKibben started out as a journalist, writing what some call the first general-audience book on climate change in 1989 [THE END OF NATURE]. Many years, many movements and many books on, his new book, HERE COMES THE SUN, highlights a crucial moment.
"The clean energy revolution is here. Solar, wind and batteries are now the cheapest form of power on the planet. Solar is no longer the Whole Foods of energy—alternative, fringe, nice but pricey. Instead, solar is the Costco of energy—cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, and ready to go. And anyone can have it, because no one owns the Sun.
"Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy—California—nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, Bill McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds.
There’s no guarantee we can make this change in time, but there is a hope—in McKibben’s eyes, our best hope for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world."
Here's an example of how relatively cheap solar panels can lead to energy independence for individuals, localities and nations that don't have their own relatively rare supply of fossil fuels. In Germany it is both easy to go to your neighborhood Home Depot equivalent and purchase a balcony solar panel that plugs directly into your ordinary socket and feeds microinverted energy into your home's circuit!(Video here.) But guess what? Balcony solar is literally illegal in every US state except Utah. Why?
Because fossil fuel billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Vladimir Putin do not WANT your average Josephine to enjoy free sun energy. They want us to BUY our power from them. Breaking free from this energy dependence is an opportunity to shift the balance of power based on wealth all across the planet.*
So get out there and USE solar wherever you can, to increase the demand, and advocate for easier solar access in your area or state. We can't wait for market forces to make solar the no-brainer default; we don't have time.
Use this link to look for a SUN DAY event near you this Sunday. And now, gear up to support a just transition to clean energy, and enjoy a couple of sunny poems!
Summer Sun | Robert Louis Stevenson
Great is the sun, and wide he goes Through empty heaven without repose; And in the blue and glowing days More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull To keep the shady parlour cool, Yet he will find a chink or two To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic spider-clad, He, through the keyhole, maketh glad; And through the broken edge of tiles, Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.
Meantime his golden face around He bares to all the garden ground, And sheds a warm and glittering look Among the ivy's inmost nook.
Above the hills, along the blue, Round the bright air with footing true, To please the child, to paint the rose, The gardener of the World, he goes.
For the Children | Gary Snyder
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
Thanks to Jama for hosting today at Jama's Alphabet Soup, on the 18th anniversary of her blog!! That's a big deal.
*There is, of course, some reckoning to do with the conditions that allow China to be the world's largest producer of solar panels. How DO they crank out, every 8 hours, enough solar panels to match the energy output of an entire coalfire plant? It probably involves labor violations. There's hope, but there's work to do, too.
Greetings, Poetry People, and Happy New Year to all educators, parents and students who know that September 1st or so is the beginning of the new year, not January 1st. (I'm sorry for you folks whose school year starts somewhere in in the first half of August; that must be so confusing.)
It's the first Poetry Friday of the month and thus the Inklings face a new challenge, a sweet one from Molly:
Write a love note to something or someone or some place. Go big or go small! You might be inspired by José A. Alcántara’s "Love Note to Silence" (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer shared it during the class Margaret and I are taking, and you can read it here: https://askatknits.com/tag/jose-a-alacantara/– andI JUST NOTICED A TYPO IN HER TEXT–HANDHELD CRANES=SANDHILL CRANES!!) or by an idea from Georgia Heard’s June Small Letters calendar.
Well, folks, I tried. I tried to take it seriously, and succeeded, for about 90 seconds---but it's been a big week of completing all the necessaries for fall WHISPERshout afterschool workshops plus 2 enormous schoolday residency grant applications, and my brain had no discipline to spare. And also...the intrigue of that typo!
So here you have it, "Love Note to Handheld Cranes", by me, which took a lot longer than 90 seconds to write, in the end. (Click the image to see it larger.)
Mary Lee is not joining us this week--she's exploring NORWAY--but you can see what else (or who else) the Inklings wrote love notes to at these links, and thanks to Margaret for hosting us!
Apologies for the late start this morning! I discovered on Wednesday that I had reports to complete on my grant-funded projects for FY25, which I knew but hadn't quite realized there would be FIVE of. And then there is the distraction of finding, down the street a piece, an enormous fig tree with a paper plate sign hanging off a lower branch: "FREE FIGS"!
I don't know about you, but the scent of the fig trees at this time of year follows me around, calling to my mouth...maybe there's something to the idea that deep in my northern German heritage was a swarthy Mediterranean soul...
So last night I was busy picking figs and forgot that I switched hostess duties with Margaret Simon. So sorry if you've been impatiently waiting to unleash your post last night or this morning!
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It's the 3rd Friday, so traditionally Climate Friday here at my juicy figgy little universe, and I have some nice news to share. The same folks who collected and published DEAR HUMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME in September 2023 are putting out second ecopoetry anthology called THE NATURE OF OUR TIMES, and I'm so pleased that they've selected one of the poems I submitted for the online Gallery to be in the print book! It's billed thus:
Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders
A companion to the First National Nature Assessment (NNA1), Forthcoming, Fall 2025 from Paloma Press, in collaboration with Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and Poets for Science
The first time I saw the call for poems back in January, however, it seemed to be focused on our little patches of backyard nature--so those were the kind of poems I submitted. You'll find "Ordinary Grass," "invasive: a kudzudoku" and "Undone" in the Gallery, which is the one that will be included in the book.
There are a number of other poets from the DMV (DC/MD/VA) included, a few of whom I know, so I'm hoping we'll be able to organize some public readings. And looking at the Bios galley I was asked to review, I also find some Big Names: Diane Ackerman, Camille Dungy, Jane Hirshfield, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ray McNeice and Arthur Sze, plus many others you might know. And of course, the editors: Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and David Hassler. I'll let you know how you can order it when the time comes. For now, enjoy "invasive: a kudzudoku":
Greetings from Damariscotta, Maine! F and I are midtrip on this epic circumnavigation of southern Maine, currently hosted by a former teaching colleague who retired last year and promptly decamped to this lil village of 1800 year-round residents. Damariscotta, like most places in Maine that we can see, is very watery: it has its own river, several of its own ponds, and today we will take a short hike that ends with an ocean view. It's also The Oyster Capital of New England, so I believe the menu for the weekend will include at least a couple of oysters!
Last weekend we spent time with my fellow Inkling Molly at home in Bowdoinham. It was also a very Maine weekend, involving lobsters, blueberry picking and a JAM LESSON. I hope I'm not revealing anything personal when I show you Molly's dedicated jam cupboard; she definitely knows what she's doing!
On our way up to Molly, we visited as many beaches as we could fit in, knowing that the further north we went, the less swimmable the water temp would be for us dedicated Maryland beachers. I've been taking a jillion photos; it helps me notice and remember details, and I used these to fashion this triptych poem in response to Catherine's First Friday challenge: Using Irene’s recent blog post as a springboard, write a triptych.
I did so (on Molly's red sofa), and then I went to look a little further to see what anyone had to say about this form or approach to writing a 3-part poem; I found this article and its example poems interesting (and also was surprised to see that both poems shared my topic!). I didn't mean to make it read across AND down, but I think it works! (Click for a better view of the photo.)
It also captures the medicinal effect, for me, of even a few hours on any beach. I hope you feel it too!
In between the Molly visit and the Cybele visit, we spent 3 days in Acadia National Park--but that's another jillion photos and a separate post. Thanks to Jane at Raincity Librarian for hosting us today, and check out the triptychs by the rest of the Inklings.
Greetings, Poetry People! I have been remiss. I have never taken the opportunity to highlight the fact that David L. Harrison, one of the greats of children's poetry, has been beavering tirelessly away on a project worthy of a Children's Poet Laureate (although he has never held that title). He is, however, the Missouri Poet Laureate, and has been organizing POETRY FROM DAILY LIFE, a series of columns published in the Springfield (MO) News-Leader and several other newspapers.
The opportunity to write short essays on what poetry is, what it means for us, and how others can access the little daily glories of poetry, has been taken up by a wide range of people writing and performing for a wide range of audiences. There are columns by Ted Kooser, Jane Yolen and Joseph Bruchac, Marilyn Singer, Janet Wong and Greg Pincus, plus some by Poetry Friday regulars including Laura Purdie Salas, Irene Latham, Matt Forrest Esenwine, and me! In fact, my second column will be published this Sunday, followed by a column by Kate Coombs on July 19.
My first piece, "You Are the Boss of Your Poem," appeared in September 2024, and my second is titled "Surprise for the writer, surprise for the reader." In both I talk about writing poetry with elementary-aged kids and feature some of their work. [It's hard to get poetry formatting right in an online newspaper column, but I've tried to be less fussy than usual about that!]
To go along with these columns, David has pursued funding for "a free online library featuring recordings of the columns published. The first fifty-two recordings were completed and introduced as Poetry from Daily Life Free Video Library three months ago." Here’s the link to that channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5wGqp5vbw2K0N7cFcGwN5
And here's the video of my first column!
Explore the video channel, follow the column (if that's even possible), and sign up for updates from David's blog--I think we might say that he is the James Brown of children's poetry, the hardest-working man in the business!
Thanks to Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for hosting us today--where she is, as usual, the walking, talking, poeting opposite of indifference, spurring us towards Peace, Poetry and Justice for All.
Greetings, fellow sun worshippers. You may not consider yourself such, may even bristle at the thought of worshipping any not-God, even one as golden and brilliant as the Sun, but we cannot do otherwise than worship the Sun. She is the Engine of Our Living. She feeds the Plants which feed the Beasts which both feed Us. She steadily vaporizes Water so that Cloud may release Rain to quench the Plants and Beasts and Us. Each time we eat or drink, watch a passing Cloud, scurry the porch cushions inside before Wind and Rain assail them, we acknowledge Sun's power in our lives, whether we show or express our honor and admiration for her outright.
I think I'm saying we shouldn't take Sun for granted. I think I'm saying we should celebrate her, even if she is but a fiery ball of gases with no interest in our attention. I think I'm saying we should, on this Summer Solstice, get ready for Sun Day.
Sun Day is a day of action on September 21, 2025,
celebrating solar and wind power, and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. "Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet – and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down. We will build, rally, sing, and come together in the communities that we need to get laws changed and work done."
Sun Day is scheduled for the Fall Equinox, organized by a coalition of grassroots organizations, clean energy experts, solar industry and worker organizations, schools, affordable housing, farmers, and creative partners. "On Sun Day people everywhere will be showcasing solar installations, electric homes and vehicles running on clean power. Thousands of small events (think NO KINGS DAY) taking place on Sun Day will help accelerate the ongoing clean energy revolution: we have the technology and the solutions, all we need is to build the political will to scale-up and accelerate clean energy and make it accessible to all." Maybe there's something you can plan to do? At the very least,go create a sun and share it!
My congregation has solar panels which were paid for through a loan and a "Commercial Solar Power Purchase Agreement (CSPPA) program developed by the Montgomery County Green Bank." Maybe your faith community also has a perfect roof just waiting to host solar panels! Maybe your community also has a "Green Bank"--a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation dedicated to accelerating energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean energy investment by partnering with the private sectorto provide more affordable and flexible financing options for County residents and businesses for clean energy and climate-resilient projects."
We installed solar at our "new" downsizer 1925 house on the Summer Solstice last year (the date was a happy coincidence). We used an unexpected surplus from the sale of the bigger old house to pay for them, and have benefited from a rebate and a tax credit that reduced the cost. These rebate programs are in jeopardy, but many states and localities may still have them.
Solar power is energetic poetry: it just comes streaming in all the time and it's up to us, the creatives, to harness it momentarily now and then. Here's how I harnessed some sun power in 2016, in the midst of one of Laura Shovan's February Poetry Projects [found objects]. This is a repost from way back then!
Thanks to our host, Carol, at The Apples in My Orchard for hosting the round-up today (and thanks, Sun, for the apples).
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