"poetry from daily life": a treasure trove of goodness

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 little 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.

sol*stice & sun*power

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 sector to 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).

wdnc club: sign me up

Greetings, beleaguered poetry colleagues. I don't want to make assumptions, but I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this are women of a certain age whose bodies are going or have gone (I could stop the sentence there, but there's more) through The Change. The experience is confusing, almost always uncomfortable, and, historically, lonely.

Don't even worry though; Melani and the We Do Not Care Club have got you.  It is high time for all of us who, due to perimenopause, menopause, PMS, or the long-lasting echoes of those hormonal rollercoasters, unite and speak out.  Here's the first video I saw from Melani and the WDNC Club:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKLJT3wywkK/

Do please go and explore Melani's videos and take some time to read the comments--I believe you also will die laughing (or crying) and then rise with a wisdom women have been taught to resist. 

It being the beginning of June, I took my turn to offer a challenge to the Inklings group, and it was to

Watch a few videos from the WE DO NOT CARE CLUB on Instagram or other platform. https://www.instagram.com/justbeingmelani/?hl=en  Write a poem that lists or explains some things that you as a woman no longer care about for whatever reason. It does not have to be because of peri/menopause. Try to replicate Melani’s deadpan delivery, if that’s possible in a poem. TWIST: include something that you DO care about, that requires you to make space by jettisoning some of the other stuff.

I either have two poems or two very different stanzas, and right now, I do not care what order they go in. You can read whichever one first.

For me what is most revealing in this WDNC experience is just how many, many, many things we have been juggling caring about our whole lives--with WE being the operative word. It's not just anxious, perfectionist me, it's loooooooads of us, trying to get free. Now I have seen (but not thoroughly read) at least one opinion from someone who feels unable to join this club. But as Melani says in one video, she realized she did not care "not in a giving-up-on-life kind of way, but in a finally-free-from-perfection kind of way." Those who feel unable to join the club may be missing the entire point, which is that we--all of us--should be able to choose what we care to put our effort into.

I hasten to add that I'm not giving up caring when people choose to put effort into selfish, thoughtless, downright evil actions--I reserve my right to moral judgment! But, girl, if you and your stretchmarked belly want to wear that fishnet crop top to my porch party, I support you, your belly, your stretch marks and your freedom. My eyes will get used to it eventually!🤣

I wonder what any of the other Inklings no longer care about.  Some of us might be too busy closing down the school year to write this week, but we'll look forward to their poems whenever they get to them. We do not care about artificial deadlines anymore❣️

Thanks to Buffy Silverman for hosting today, and don't miss your chance to sign up to host at Mary Lee's blog!

icymi: kaveh akbar on poetry & spirituality

This. 

Just this, to consider with warmth, incisive thinking and a brave willingness towards uncertainty, to remember that "as wardens of our species most dangerous technology, [the English language], to treat our materials seriously. Embrace the mystery of earnest, mellifluous language." 

Worth your 49 minutes, friends.

Thanks for rounding us up, Karen Edmisten!

writing it from the ground up: climate friday @ mjlu

Greetings, Poetry People! I have found it immensely difficult and discouraging to remember that climate issues still matter lately, but they do. The way I'm looking at it is that climate justice is social justice, and right now a healthy planet depends on a healthy democracy! 

Everything is connected, as they say, and so any small thing we can do contributes to the bigger everything that we absolutely cannot do--not alone, anyway.

As you know, my two small things are teaching poetry to kids, almost always with a nature connection, and communicating about climate & planet, whether through organizations, poems, or right here on the blog. Today Katharine Hayhoe is helping me expand on the May theme for my daily drafts, ❣️love on fire.🔥

Katharine is a climate scientist who writes a Substack called "Talking Climate." I like it because it's brief and friendly: it starts with Good News; lays the Not-So-Good News on us, and ends with What You Can Do. Here are excerpts from her Mother's Day edition:

The data is clear: “across every country,  love for the next generation is the dominant reason for action on climate change.” And when we look at who’s particularly in support, mothers immediately rise to the top. In the U.S., 81% of mothers surveyed are worried about climate change. Even more, 93%, agreed with the statement that “we have a moral responsibility to create a safe and healthy climate for ourselves and our children.” We all want a safe and secure future for our children and their children. Women in general are more likely to list climate and environment issues as a top voting priority, according to new findings that 62% of “climate voters” are women.

One of the most effective climate actions any of us can take is to join a group. Together, our voices are amplified and become even more powerful. In the U.S., I’m a big fan of Moms Clean Air Force, a group of more than 1.5 million parents, and Mothers Out Front, that includes over 35,000 mothers and other caregivers advocating for climate action and a resilient future. I’m also a founding member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan climate advocacy group of climate scientists and moms whose website provides all kinds of resources you can use to talk about climate change with your kids, regardless of where you live.

My grown offspring have their own approaches to climate issues and action, but I'm a Climate Poetry Mom to all the kids I teach. The current afterschool program is THIS PRETTY PLANET, which involves collecting spring nature treasures, arranging them into mandalas, and then writing about them--with love. Yesterday 3rd-grader Benicio brought in a single tall stalk of grass grown to seedhead and said, "Look at my new pen!" I remarked that that would be a great poem title; he ended up writing something different so I asked if I could write the new pen poem. Here it is.

Thanks for passing through today, and thanks to Ramona at Pleasures from the Page for hosting us today. May ❣️love on fire🔥 fuel whatever tough work you have to do this week!

mayday mayday mayday* 2025

buchananwbc.org

After an irregular April I hope this poem from yesterday sets me on a steadier path in more ways than I can enumerate.  Thanks to Linda Mitchell for offering us this Inklings challenge for May.

Whitney Hanson (https://www.whitneyhansonpoetry.com/) is a young poet who has caught my interest. She shares primarily on TikTok and that’s why I didn’t know of her until I caught up with her on Meta. Hanson offers poems that begin with, “in poetry we say…”  In these poems, Hanson takes a common phrase we know in English and translates it poetically.

Here's my response; my post is brief while I go consider what might be the benefits of becoming a TikTok poet...

    

DC's May Day Rally & March

Thanks to Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading for taking over hosting duties for our friend Molly, who had an emergency, and you'll find more poetic translations here:

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

*P.S. I just love the triple conglomeration of metaphor in "May  Day."  Who knew? 

npm 25: poetry friday roundup and kidlit progressive poem l

Welcome, welcome! It's the last Friday of National Poetry Month already, and I'm honored to be gathering y'all here as host. I've been away in France and England for a good part of April for family celebrations and haven't been able to focus on the festivities as usual--least of all my own not-quite-a-project--so I'm looking forward to focusing on YOURS!

Please leave your links with InLinkz 
 ⏬below below⏬...

And now I will throw myself with gusto at Line 25 of our annual Kidlit Progressive Poem. As most of you know, this 13-year-old tradition was begun by Irene Latham and is now shepherded by Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche  and carried forward each day by one of our number. Some of us have participated in all the variations nearly every year, and some of us are brand new to the community or to the practice--but whoever we are, this year in particular, it is meet, right and salutary to create in community. (That early religious language really sticks, doesn't it?)

This week on Earth Day--yes, it was still Earth Day this week--I rode my bike down to the Supreme Court to show up for the cause of diverse books in curriculum that represent the reality of ALL of us, including LGBTQ+ people and families, and against the slippery slope of opting out of public school instruction that does not align with parents' beliefs.* Then I sat in a DC cafe and typed up some 3rd grade poems about maps and exploration, including this one: 

Seriously, one kid's contributed word was "anxiety" (thank you Doechi)!

Then I attended a gathering of Arts & Humanities folks--artists, educators, administrators, funders--where someone said, "It's VUCA out there, people: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous." But, she said, creatives are equipped to respond in these times, and it's easier to respond in joy when we get together, in community. 

That's what I've loved about this year's poem, the idea that there's a WE opening the April window, a WE racing to the garden, a WE setting up easels, dabbling in paints and communing without constraints. I want to bring that WE back to the forefront in my line, to include us humans among the other species of flora and fauna, not as benevolent overlords but as coequal beings with the dogwoods and daffodils, the woodpeckers and whip-poor-wills, the goldendoodles and the grasshoppers.

So here comes my line to follow Linda Kulp Trout's...

Open an April window

let sunlight paint the air

stippling every dogwood

dappling daffodils with flair

Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming sweetgum

Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilac and phlox
commune without constraints

Breathe deeply the gifts of lilacs
rejoice in earth’s sweet offerings
feel renewed-give thanks at day’s end
remember long-ago springs

Bask in a royal spring meadow
romp like a golden-doodle pup!
startle the sleeping grasshoppers
delight in each flowering shrub…

Drinking in orange-blossom twilight
relax to the rhythm of stars dotting sky

as a passing whip-poor-will gulps bugs

We follow a moonlit path that calls us:

Grab your dripping brushes!

_____________________________________________________

Michelle Kogan is the perfect person to take us down that moonlit path, paintbrushes in hand!

• 
  
• April 26 Michelle Kogan 
• April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
• April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
• April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
• April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

And now, your exciting last-Friday-of-National-Poetry-Month doings! Thanks for being part of This Shared World.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

*Here was my sign at the rally, where I stood with Laura Shovan, Robin G. and some other 

Authors Against Book Bans:

It's lengthy and full of big words but some topics require a little more reading, a little more thinking. (My other sign idea was "IT'S COMPLICATED.")

npm2025: things I keep meaning to look up #9

I care about facts, objectivity, science, the truth--but these concerns can get in the way of poetry's appreciation of impression, emotion, experience, The Truth. This month I'm challenging myself to resist the urge to look everything up as I'm writing, and it's working--today  I wrote without one urge to look something up!

Prompt today is from NaPoWriMo: "try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths." I also just jacked Robert Hillyer's rhyme scheme from "Fog" wholesale--a technique I saw at Tabatha's blog recently.

 

And don't miss the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, hosted by Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche  and carried forward each day by this list of contributors.

• April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
• April 2 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
• April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
  
• April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
• April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
• April 6 Buffy Silverman 
• April 7 Jone Rush MacCulloch
• April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
• April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference 
• April 10 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
• April 11 Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities 
• April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
• April 13 Cathy Stenquist
• April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainely Write
• April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
• April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
• April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
• April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
• April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
• April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
• April 21 Tanita Davis 
• April 22 Patricia Franz
• April 23 Ruth at There’s no such thing as a Godforsaken town
• April 24 Linda Kulp Trout 
• April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
• April 26 Michelle Kogan 
• April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
• April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
• April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
• April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

npm2025: things I keep meaning to look up 8

I care about facts, objectivity, science, the truth--but these concerns can get in the way of poetry's appreciation of impression, emotion, experience, The Truth. This month I'm challenging myself to resist the urge to look everything up as I'm writing.  

Prompt today is from Darius Phelps with Kyle Liang at #VerseLove: 

"Write a poem that explores an inherited gesture, belief, or ritual—something passed down from a parent, grandparent, or elder in your life."

And don't miss the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, hosted by Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche  and carried forward each day by this list of contributors.

• April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
• April 2 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
• April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
  
• April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
• April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
• April 6 Buffy Silverman 
• April 7 Jone Rush MacCulloch
• April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
• April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference 
• April 10 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
• April 11 Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities 
• April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
• April 13 Cathy Stenquist
• April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainely Write
• April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
• April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
• April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
• April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
• April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
• April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
• April 21 Tanita Davis 
• April 22 Patricia Franz
• April 23 Ruth at There’s no such thing as a Godforsaken town
• April 24 Linda Kulp Trout 
• April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
• April 26 Michelle Kogan 
• April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
• April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
• April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
• April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

npm2025: things I keep meaning to look up 6

I care about facts, objectivity, science, the truth--but these concerns can get in the way of poetry's appreciation of impression, emotion, experience, The Truth. This month I'm challenging myself to resist the urge to look everything up as I'm writing.  

Prompt today is from Stacey Joy at #VerseLove: 

"Visit George Ella Lyon’s website for a refresher on Where I’m From. If you are a list person, create a list of people/places/things/memories. Then compose your poem in any way you prefer."

And don't miss the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, hosted by Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche  and carried forward each day by this list of contributors.

• April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
• April 2 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
• April 3 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
• April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
• April 5 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
• April 6 Buffy Silverman 
• April 7 Jone Rush MacCulloch
• April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
• April 9 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference 
• April 10 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
• April 11 Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities 
• April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
• April 13 Cathy Stenquist
• April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainely Write
• April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
• April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
• April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
• April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
• April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
• April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
• April 21 Tanita Davis 
• April 22 Patricia Franz
• April 23 Ruth at There’s no such thing as a Godforsaken town
• April 24 Linda Kulp Trout 
• April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
• April 26 Michelle Kogan 
• April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
• April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
• April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
• April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

˚ ༘ ೀ⋆.˚HaPpy NaTioNaL POeTry MoNtH!˚ ༘ ೀ⋆.˚

Greetings, April; greetings, Poetry Month; greetings, visitors! That all sounds much more upbeat than I feel, frankly. I feel a little like I'M the one who stood up and speechified for 25 gravity-amplifying hours on the floor of the Senate trying not to wet my pants--but then I have been fighting off a few annoying health issues for weeks, and I do live rather close to Implosion Central, and raise your hand if you also are struggling to go with the flow of elder care? In any case, it has been WORK lately to remember, DAILY WORK, that our daily work of witnessing the world through poetry has real power, remains worth doing, is a legitimate response to the terrorism of this "administration."

My friends, I know that you are doing all you can to place your body into the company of the millions of others turning out tomorrow to do the first, most basic response in this moral moment--to upend business as usual, the appearance of normalcy. But here's a lil help just in case.

Click the map to find your protest. 

An overlapping group of us from Poetry Friday and Laura Shovan's Fab Poetry Project (yes, fab; also Feb), met up joyfully at the MLK Library in DC on Wednesday night for a talk with Maggie Smith promoting her new book DEAR WRITER.  She's the one famous for her poem "Good Bones," which she says now feels like it's not quite hers anymore like her other work, but belongs to the public domain.  She read it (and has not memorized it, nor any of her poems--that made me feel better about how I can't seem to memorize my poems). I'm dropping it here, because it does have a remarkable ability to do its job, which is to salvage something from the shithole and make it worth the effort.

Good Bones | Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

So here we are, trying to make this place beautiful, and welcoming and spacious and comforting, with our words. The Inklings are doing so this week with a simple challenge to write a shadorma, thanks to Margaret Simon (whose new book, WERE YOU THERE?, has dropped and which you. do. not. want. to. miss!). The shadorma, according to the shadowy information available on the interwebs, is a 6-line poem of Spanish origin with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5.  There are those who think the shadorma is not a "real" form at all but a thing somebody made up, which is Spanish like chicken tikka masala (invented in Birmingham, England) is Indian.

Whatever its origins, the shadorma is fun to write.  Here's an early try from some years ago:

Shawarma Shadorma

Sleep sizzles

aromatically

on the spit

of night. Carve

juicy slices onto white

sheets of pita bed.

And here's today's effort, an InstadraftTM .

more bones for the reluctant buyer

in a pool

pulled bare of ivy

flowering 

quince blazes 

briefly, camouflaging thorns--

then cools to spiked hedge

Check out what the other Inklings have shadormed below, if life allowed them the opportunity, and thanks to our first PoFri host of the month, Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme, where rainbows are being appropriately and thoroughly celebrated!

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading 

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche