whoo-hoo it's here!

It's National Poetry Month and the annual poetry party has begun!  There are so many great projects going on in the Kidlitosphere that I'm going to rely on Jama's round-up post for the definitive list.  I'm already scheduled to take part in two projects (see here), but that leaves quite a few days for me to play along with other challenges and enjoyments throughout April.  I'm thrilled that my Spring Break falls in a way that allows some extra time, so starting on Friday, April 2,  I'll challenge myself to visit at least 3 blog projects each day through April 12.  Here are some of the places I'll be visiting...

2015 KIDLITOSPHERE POETRY EVENTS

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Irene Latham at Live Your Poem has recruited 30 poets for her fourth annual Kidlit Progressive Poem and I'm excited to be one of them. . Here’s the full schedule of participating bloggers:

1 Jone at Check it Out
2 Joy at Poetry for Kids Joy
3 Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe
4 Laura at Writing the World for Kids
5 Charles at Poetry Time Blog
6 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
7 Catherine at Catherine Johnson
8 Irene at Live Your Poem
9 Mary Lee at Poetrepository
10 Michelle at Today’s Little Ditty
11 Kim at Flukeprints
12 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
13 Doraine at DoriReads
14 Renee at No Water River
15 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
16 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
17 Buffy at Buffy’s Blog
18 Sheila at Sheila Renfro
19 Linda at Teacher Dance
20 Penny at A Penny and her Jots
21 Tara at A Teaching Life
22 Pat at Writer on a Horse
23 Tamera at The Writer’s Whimsy
24 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
25 Tabatha at The Opposite of indifference
26 Brian at Walk the Walk
27 Jan at Bookseedstudio
28 Amy at The Poem Farm
29 Donna at Mainely Write
30 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme

Irene’s personal poetry project at Live Your Poem is ARTSPEAK! She’ll be writing daily poems inspired by the online collections of the National Gallery of Art, and I might join her in exphrastasy!

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At Author Amok, Laura Shovan is hosting “What Are You Wearing?” — a full month featuring poetry about clothes. I'll be a Monday guest blogger on April 13, sharing a favorite clothing-related poem with a paragraph or two of introduction.

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Strap yourselves in your seats and get ready for an emotional roller coaster at A Year of Reading! Mary Lee Hahn’s project is called PO-EMotions. She will be writing a poem each day that evokes an emotion or uses an emotion word in the title or body of the poem. I'll join her in some of these, and she’ll also be cross-posting at her personal poetry blog, Poetrepository.

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Jone MacCulloch will be sharing student poetry daily at Check It Out. She’s also once again doing her annual Poetry Postcard Project, where Silver Star ES students send out illustrated poetry postcards to anyone requesting them. Sign up HERE if you’d like to receive one. This is a wonderful project — seven years running so far — I always enjoy receiving my postcard each April.

At Deo Writer, Jone is hosting her first month-long writing challenge. She’ll be playing with poems that have something to do with nature and double “ll’s,” (like in her last name). I'm definitely in on this one--I love starting with one word!

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Diane Mayr at Random Noodling presents Ekphrastic Mondays! Beginning April 6, she will post an original poem inspired by a work of art. 

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At Today’s Little Ditty, Michelle Heindenrich Barnes is spotlighting 2015 Newbery Medal Winner Kwame Alexander as her Ditty of the Month Club special guest! She’s kicking things off with an awesome interview, giveaway, and an invitation to write a poem (or poems) this month in response to Kwame’s ditty challenge. Looking forward to this one too!

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Over at Poetry for Children, Sylvia Vardell is celebrating the just released Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations (Pomelo Books, 2015) by featuring short videos of children reading some of the poems from the book.

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Over at The Poem Farm, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is playing a game called Sing That Poem! Each day she’ll post a new original poem with the meter of a well-known song. Folks can print a PDF and try to match each day’s poem with the song it was inspired by. I'm starting to feel a little drunk with all the possibilities here!

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Linda Baie at TeacherDance will be doing a lot of writing this month. In addition to participating in the a number of other challenges, she's writing a haiku or other related form every day.

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April Halprin Wayland and her trusty canine muse Eli will be feeding us a PPP (previously published poem) every day all month long.

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Over at The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia Stohr-Hunt will be focusing on poetic forms: “I want to shine a spotlight on forms other than strictly rhyming (though rhyme is perfectly fine) for the elementary and middle school classroom. I love rhyme just as much as the next person, but I worry that much of the poetry parents select for kids and teachers select for classrooms is chosen simply because it rhymes."  Let's hear it for Poetry with a capital P!

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Liz Steinglass will also be writing a poem every day this month. Her theme this year is items hiding in or on a desk.  Hmmm...lots of possibilities here.

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Laura Purdie Salas will be sharing tips on presenting poetry to students at Writing the World for Kids. She’ll also include a poem that is relevant to each daily tip.

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Travis Jonker will be posting his annual gallery of book spine poems at 100 Scope Notes. There’s still time to submit a book spine cento — he’ll be collecting them throughout the month. Tips and details here.

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At Alphabet Soup, Jama will be featuring some very cool newly published poetry picture books. And she's serving up a little extra treat: HotTEAs of Children’s Poetry.

So...let the festival begin!