welcome to npm 2023 & progressive poem line 2

WHY NOT

combine an illustration by Marc Brown of ARTHUR fame with a line from the current adult poet laureate Ada Limon?

WHY NOT 

open a colorful vista and suggest that each of us, however small in the landscape, has an essential role to play?

WHY NOT

(if you can't center poetry every day of every month of every year) make April the epicenter of poetry in the nation's calendar?

As for me, I'm certain that this opening page from the book that taught me to read also taught me what I was meant for...

"a poet writing poems" in her garret

This makes it look like poeting is a solitary activity done with eyes lifted to the heavens, but we all know that poetry happens in community.  First of all, poets write to communicate, and the moment anyone reads our words--even if we don't know them--community begins to develop.  Secondly, poets help and support each other as they change and experiment and learn and grow.  Thirdly, poets play and collaborate, as we are doing again this year with the Progressive Poem!

Irene Latham began this tradition in 2012 and hosted our month-long collaboration through 2019, when Margaret Simon took over. (Early archives here; recent archives are tabs at the top of Margaret's page.)

Mary Lee Hahn kicks us off this year, following these few rules:

• Each poet-blogger adds a line, creating a poem for children
• by copying the previous lines exactly as written (unless permission from the previous poet is obtained).
• Commentary on the process is welcome but optional.

Here is Mary Lee's opening line, which is gloriously "opening" by any definition of the word despite having a happy-ending sound to it.

                                        Suddenly everything fell into place.

At first I thought I wanted that place to be a crossroads of some kind, to lead in many directions, but I spent time yesterday gardening and watching little spring storms come and go, showers of wind and hail between stretches of sun. I thought about what it's like when rain lands in its best destination, when we find we've landed just where we're meant to be. And so...

                                        Suddenly everything fell into place

                                      like raindrops hitting soil and sinking in.

But think also of all those raindrops that hit rooftops or pavement or other hard places far from soil or stream...they have a ways to go, a more strenuous journey. Do they all get there in the end?  Do we?  As Mary Lee says, "I love stories that start at the end...Write me a story that ends with sudden clarity."

Our poem will continue tomorrow with Tabatha's line, which you'll find at The Opposite of Indifference.

April 1 Mary Lee Hahn, Another Year of Reading
April 2 Heidi Mordhorst, My Juicy Little Universe
April 3 Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference
April 4 Buffy Silverman
April 5 Rose Cappelli, Imagine the Possibilities
April 6 Donna Smith, Mainely Write
April 7 Margaret Simon, Reflections on the Teche
April 8 Leigh Anne, A Day in the Life
April 9 Linda Mitchell, A Word Edgewise
April 10 Denise Krebs, Dare to Care
April 11 Emma Roller, Penguins and Poems
April 12 Dave Roller, Leap Of Dave
April 13 Irene Latham Live You Poem
April 14 Janice Scully, Salt City Verse
April 15 Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 16 Linda Baie TeacherDance
April 17 Carol Varsalona, Beyond Literacy Link
April 18 Marcie Atkins
April 19 Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard
April 20 Cathy Hutter, Poeturescapes
April 21 Sarah Grace Tuttle at Sarah Grace Tuttle’s Blog,
April 22 Marilyn Garcia
April 23 Catherine at Reading to the Core
April 24 Janet Fagal, hosted by Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference
April 25 Ruth, There is no Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town
April 26 Patricia J. Franz, Reverie
April 27 Theresa Gaughan, Theresa’s Teaching Tidbits
April 28 Karin Fisher-Golton, Still in Awe Blog
April 29 Karen Eastlund, Karen’s Got a Blog
April 30 Michelle Kogan Illustration, Painting, and Writing

welcome april! welcome national poetry month! welcome all!

Greetings and salutations! It is my distinct honor to be hosting Poetry Friday on this auspicious first Friday of National Poetry Month 2022, and I'm delighted to have you all here!

BIRTHDAY #1       

There's quite a bit to accomplish today, first of which is to wish my little April Fool the happiest of birthdays! My first-born is 23 today and finally celebrating a day of majority cautiously but not under total lockdown, which is how she passed 21 and 22. For her pains she is receiving the first Harry Styles single since early 2020 from his new album HARRY'S HOUSE.  Let's all share in her joy...

 

 

POEM #1

Second on the agenda is the April challenge for the critique group known as INKLINGS, consisting of  Margaret Simon, Linda Mitchell, me, Molly Hogan, Mary Lee Hahn and Catherine Flynn.  This month, thanks to Mary Lee we are writing with help from Ellen Bass and a heart-wrenching poem.

Use “The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass as a mentor text. Keep the title, but choose a theme/message either from your own life or from current events.

I also incorporated Metaphor Dice into my effort, with plans for entering Taylor Mali's Golden Dice contest.

<poem forthcoming in POETRY BY CHANCE: An Anthology of Poems Powered by Metaphor Dice>

This is why we keep at it, right, folks?  Because we cannot help ourselves, and because as bell hooks said, "The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is--it's to imagine what is possible."

 

🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎

So now let's look at the poetry-art that's moving from possible into REAL over the next month. We have everything from new books to author chats, from poem-a-day projects to line-a-day collaborations!

Birthday #2

Today is also the book birthday of IMPERFECT II, an anthology of poems for middle-schoolers focused on PERSPECTIVE.  This is a follow-up to IMPERFECT I, published in 2018 and also edited by Tabatha Yeatts, and it's already trending on major book sale sites!  I'm thrilled to have two poems in this collection (alongside many Poetry Friday regulars), which offers poetry to answer this question:  

When we've lost sight of the big picture, how can we help ourselves put things back in perspective? 

Get it now at Indiebound, Barnes & Noble or Amazon, and follow the blog at https://imperfectii.blogspot.com/ 

NPM PROJECT #1

Mine!  Here you can find more information about my month of response to ALL WE CAN SAVE, the collection of essays and poems edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson.  I'm reading it and listening to it and learning soooo much.  I can't say I'll write a poem every day, but I'll try to write something every day, and I'm challenging myself to write outside my comfort zone. 

NPM PROJECT #2

Joining me in responding to ALL WE CAN SAVE is Mary Lee Hahn, who WILL be writing a poem each day and depositing them here at her Poetrepository (one of my all time favorite coinages).  She has some intriguing themes lined up. I'm enjoying the feeling that there could be some dialogue between our projects...

 

 

NPM Poetry Friday Tradition #1

Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup will once again provide us with the NPM Kidlitosphere Events Roundup. Her catalog of all the exciting bites on the National Poetry Month menu will make your mouth water, maybe even make you shout!

NPM Poetry Friday Tradition #2

It's the annual Progressive Poem, originated by Irene Latham (who kicks us off this year) and now hosted by Margaret Simon.  Over 30 days, 30 poets will attempt to (and succeed; we always do) cobble together a collaborative poem, line by precarious, unpredictable line. Check out the team in the sidebar to the right!

NPM PROJECT #3

Linda Mitchell's APRIL poetry project at A Word Edgewise is to read one letter per day written by her grandmother from decades before she was born, as an inspiration for a new poem.  Can you IMAGINE how wonderful this will be?

NPM PROJECT #4

Michelle Barnes has resurfaced from a long pause (oh, we missed her!) for NPM and will be repeating last year's NPM project at Today's Little Ditty—Filling the Well. Playing with the stuff that inspires poetry, she'll be creating daily "inspirational musings" that pair quotations with art, photography, poems, music, dance... anything that strikes her fancy and gives the words new life.

NPM POETRY CHAT: SCOOP!

Laura Shovan's annual poetry chat at the Nerdy Book Club Facebook page is Sunday, April 10 at 6 pm. This year's topic is "Staying Out Past Dark: Saying Hard Things Through Poetry." It's a roundtable discussion with MG author/poets Chris Baron, Rebecca Balcarcel, and Rajani LaRocca about reading and writing poetry as a resource for kids during tough times.

 

 

 

Isn't it all heady and exciting!?  And now, finally, YOU get your say!  

Leave your link below and LET'S PARTY!

🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎🌍🌷🌻🌎

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

#evenmorehope

Wishing all a merry and bright Solstice!  Our family's 12 Nights of Yuletide begins this evening with a special meal and a candle-lighting ceremony (see Dec. 20 below), so all I have time for in between cooking and tablesetting is to recap my #haikuforhope this week.  Thanks again to Catherine Flynn and Mary Lee Hahn who ignited this little practice for me again this year.

Dec. 15 

holiday party 

I can’t enjoy the spiced punch 

emptied water jugs

Dec. 16 

pins and needles 

weary foot won't take the weight 

limbs stage a slowdown 

Dec. 17 

butter flour fruit spice 

rows and columns of goodness 

edible calendar

Dec. 18 

blur of class play grades 

parties actual meetings: 

a girl could lose a day  

Dec. 19 

weeks of drought 

dry arroyo of bedroom 

a flood of daughter

Dec. 20 

tradition, you bully 

meet me at the corner of 

must and love

Dec. 21

dark clock ticks 

repeatedly remind myself

tomorrow is longer

**********************************

Three and half more hours of school...I look forward to a full tour of blogposts this weekend, rounded up for us by Buffy at her blog.  Joy to you all!

#haikuforhope

Some of us in the Kidlitosphere, in the Twitterverse, are spending December haikuing, just as in 2016, led and inspired by Mary Lee, we haikued for healing. (I now regret attempting to use haiku as a verb.)

This year our friend Catherine suggested modifying our daily writing practice to #haikuforhope, and that is certainly resonating with me...although it does appear that when you're trying to produce a pithy moment each and every day, just about any topic comes to seem like a commentary on hope, if not actually hopeful.

Here are mine so far this week:




Dec. 1

last red branch exhales
catching up in slow motion
refusing to rush

Dec. 2

Sunday morning Spirit Play
we all watch as fog lifts
in a water glass

                                                           Dec. 3

                                                           nothing can pierce this
                                                           afternoon dark
                                                           not even 12-foot Rudolph

Dec. 4

seven-year-olds sit
in silent rows, testing
cold winds test the glass

Dec. 5

unwinding the light
tightening the twinkle
window candles spark

Dec. 6

"we are in trouble"
small hands mold
plasticene landscapes



 

Dec. 7

Tuesday despair
Friday giddy energy
estrogenic seasons


Participants in this December tradition are Catherine Flynn @flynn_catherine, @MaryLeeHahn, @MargaretGSimon, Linda Mitchell @LindaMitch2783, Molly Hogan @mbhmaine, Julieanne Harmatz @jarhartz, Jone MacCulloch @JoneMac53, Jean LaTourette @mz_lat,  Linda Baie @LBaie, Carol Varsalona @cvarsalona, and @mandyrobek....and probably more.  Join us!

And join the Poetry Friday round-up (what is that? go HERE to find out) hosted by Liz Steinglass today, where there's all kinds of merry and bright.

#ncte16

I'm coming to you from balmy Atlanta this week, where Mary Lee Hahn and I will be presenting later today a session called "Risking Writing," along with Dr. Shanetia Clark of Salisbury University and author Patricia Hruby Powell.  At the heart of this session is the writing of a poem brainstormed by Shanetia, drafted by Mary Lee, and revised by me.  Patricia will supply inspirational commentary. Do check back in to see what we came up with!

...And here we are, back from a really terrific collaboration between presenters--all the more terrific because none of us knew all the rest of us before we met in our session room!  That in itself was part of the risk.

Here's the photo--by Mary Lee, of course--that we offered as a prompt.

After brief introductions, Patricia kicked us off by emphasizing the fun in writing, reviewing some of the  techniques she uses, like keeping a bank of verbs related to her subject handy.  She spoke about emotion as the key both to authentic writing, and about its role in the teacher-student relationship.

                                                  Here we all are getting started.







Next, Shanetia brainstormed and Mary Lee drafted based on her ideas.  A document camera let participants watch this work as we all commented on the process.




















Participants also brainstormed and drafted.  Then I narrated a process of revision, reading aloud to find the music in the words and also to hear where the emotion was coming through.

 








 Likewise, our intrepid crew of participants had a go at revision.  It was a lot more difficult to come to a conclusion
with our shared poem than we expected, and the feeling of being vulnerable in front of an audience--as our students are asked to be every day--was palpable!

Our poem may not yet be finished, but here it is.  You can follow the whole process by going to #riskingwriting on Twitter, where we hope that others will share their efforts at writing in front of their students!

                        

The Voice of the Vegetables

We don't get to pick
the basket we land in--
pepper with eggplant with squash.

Grown apart, at market
we tumble together
on a background of red--
color and spice and crunch.

Unity is not a concession.
Stand, then speak, then lead.
         
(c) Shanetia Clark, Mary Lee Hahn, Heidi Mordhorst 2016

Here were the few slides of our presentation:

The round-up today is with Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales.  It's not much of a risk just joining in our friendly Fridays, but letting the poetry take you--that's riskier.

Poetry Friday & NCTE

The time draws near and I'm getting excited...the NCTE Annual Convention begins next Thursday, November 20!  I'm looking forward, as I do every year, to spending some time surrounded by fellow teachers who are passionate about English language and literature teaching.  It's also the time of year when I get to hang out in person with the blogging poets and teachers whom I "see" each Friday right here in the virtual Poetry Friday community.  Click here to find out more about the six-year-old Poetry Friday tradition.
 
Out of these steadily inspiring virtual relationships has come a great gift to teachers--the Poetry Friday Anthologies, created and compiled by two champions of children's poetry, professor and cheerleader Sylvia Vardell and poet and community organizer Janet Wong.  Their mission to support teachers in bringing more poetry into  classrooms began with an e-book--Poetry Tag Time--a concept which I am proud to have been a little helpful in developing.

There are now three Poetry Friday Anthologies--one for K-5, one for middle school, and most recently one for science.  Over the last few weeks I've been highlighting science poetry by "classic" poets, but The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science is a catalog of the best poets currently writing for children, all in one place, supporting teachers as they attempt to do Too Much All at Once.

I'm a classroom teacher.  I know what our curricula look like.  Someone in our central office (or several someones) puts together a ginormous pile of standards, indicators, lessons and resources in an effort to help us classroom professionals offer our students a rich and "rigorous" curriculum.  (Personally I prefer a rich and vigorous curriculum; somehow "rigor" always make me think of dead bodies, stiff and cold.)  The effect is almost always an overwhelming feeling of dread as we look ahead each week to all that we are supposed to do and teach in our measly 6 hours per day with our students.  The triage is bloody and there is only one solution:  synergy.

syn·er·gy  ˈsinərjē/    noun

the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects

Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

We also call this "integrating the curriculum," but when your curriculum is delivered to you in several separate binders or individual webpages labeled Math, Reading, Writing, Science and Social Studies, it can be hard to remember that none of these "subjects" stands alone and separate--not in our adult minds, and certainly not  the minds of elementary students.  That's just not how people think and learn.

There is always a necessity to get down into the details of how to teach each little skill and concept, but if we let that approach run our days in the classroom, we rob our students of the chance to marvel at the beauty of the interdependent web of ideas, knowledge and indeed all existence.

So how do we successfully attempt Too Much All at Once?  One way is to use poetry to address other curriculum areas.   This will be the subject of the Children's Literature Assembly Master Class that I'll be helping to lead at this year's NCTE conference.  My roundtable discussion will focus on ways to use poetry to teach science and vice versa--to synergize the elements of language, metaphor, curiosity, investigation, research and data into a whole that becomes a powerful tool for student engagement and learning.  The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science takes us there with next to no effort (although we will need some courage, if we're not teachers who live entirely comfortably in the world of poetry).

Here's a shout-out to my colleagues at Rock View Elementary School in North Kensington, MD, some of whom will win copies of The PFA for Science in a raffle on Monday.  I'll close with one of my personal favorites from this anthology, placed in the 1st grade section but accessible to elementary kids of all ages.  It's by Mary Lee Hahn, my friend and fellow classroom teacher from Dublin, Ohio, who will also be presenting at the CLA Master Class next weekend.  See how few words--well-chosen words!--you need to bring rhyme, rhythm, scientific concepts and higher-order thinking to your students?

The Lion and the House Cat ||  Mary Lee Hahn

different strength
different size
same chin
same eyes

different mane
different stride
same stretch
same pride

And below are a few snippets and excerpts from this wonder of a book, all taken from the Pomelo Books website.  Go on and make your teaching life a little more efficient and a little more beautiful:  commit to Poetry Friday (once a month? every other week? every Friday?) and get yourself one of these anthologies to help out.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Keri at Keri Recommends.  Enjoy!
 

     

passing the poetime

Last night a little party convened here in Boston.  At the table were Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm, Laura Purdie Salas, Carrie Finison of Story Patch, and Janet Fagal.  Later we had visits from Franki Sibberson, Tara Smith of A Teaching Life and Linda Baie of TeacherDance. The conversation was both broad and delightedly poetricentric.


One thing that came up was Amy's inability to keep a watch running, and her tendency to interfere with other technology.  We laughed about the strangeness of that phenomenon and remarked how (as Daisy would say) "that's a thing"--we all had heard of people who have those sort of troubles with cell phones and alarm clocks and streetlights.

This morning I went and read about EMFs--electromagnetic fields--and about our own bioelectromagnetism.  I found my way to a fascinating discussion with the flavor of quackery which I nonetheless found to be a compelling argument for increasing animal dis-ease, including our own human panoply of illnesses.  This is an area also where science intersects with earthcentric spirituality: read here for more views of our human "energy body."

But for now, all we need to know is that some people have a problem with

Killing Time

I plug it in but
nothing happens.
Lights dim and die
when I pass by.

I press the button;
nothing happens.
Clocks stop and sigh
when I pass by.

I wind my watch;
replace the batteries.
Again they die.
I don't know why.

I specialize
in killing time.

HM 2013 draft


You can productively kill a little more time enjoying the posts over at Write. Sketch. Repeat. with Katya today.  Welcome back, Katya!

one, two, three juicy grasshoppers

Some coincidences cannot be ignored. A coupla weeks ago I enjoyed a gripping performance of the poem below by Joy Acey, a fellow participant in that Highlights Foundation workshop I keep mentioning. It's one of the poems Joy uses in her workshops with children. Despite my fondness for Mary Oliver's work, it was new to me, and striking.

Then I found the same celebration of ordinary miracles (go here for the start of this thread) posted on Mary Lee Hahn's Year of Reading blog, with a whole different 84th birthday spin on it.

Today I notice that the actual title of this poem is not "The Grasshopper," or "A Prayer," or even "At last, and too soon." Instead it is "The Summer Day"--not "A Summer Day," but "THE Summer Day," and here it comes. Tomorrow our family will host our 10th Annual Summer Solstice Picnic, a loose affair involving a Ritual Unveiling of Foil and Plastic, watermelon, lightning bugs, mosquitoes, public consumption of alcohol, and quite often a thunderstorm.

Maybe this year, as we drag the picnic tables up the hill to the gazebo, there will be a grasshopper. I'll take sugar just in case.

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day....

Read the rest at http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html

P.S. More juice: my son is right now telling me that "this pineapple has two kinds of energy, even though it's not moving: heat energy, and citrus energy: the burning acid parts....It's true."

the fuellest month

My universe turned very juicy indeed on April 1, 1999: on this day was brought forth the fresh, hardy, thrive-anywhere perennial who is my daughter Daisy. Nowadays, what with her ever-changingness, the launch of National Poetry Month, all this spring ("as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,/Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes"), the first day of April seems to fill up my tank and fuel fresh starts and forward thrust. Heaven knows I need that! (I also need packages that arrive unexpectedly filled with crazy faith and chocolate-peanut clusters, but that's a whole 'nother heart-tickling story...)

I had a few poems in mind for today's post but now I have a better idea, if you'll join me in some April Fuellishness: a poetry game. I'll start, and as your comment you'll add a line to the poem. It's MiniPoetryTag!

It might work best if you cut and paste previous lines into the comment box before adding your line. My job will be to come back this afternoon and wrap the whole thing up, wherever it may have taken us. Ready? (And don't forget to visit Amy at the Poem Farm for all the rest of Poetry Friday.) Here goes....

*******************

Fresh starts, forward thrust--

[to you!]

resume

Thoughtful commentary will resume after I update my resume and prepare to find a new job. I am now officially an "involuntary transfer."
*sigh* In the meantime, slam bam thank you Mr. Mali...



Definitely beautiful.

Discuss what YOU make this Poetry Friday at A Year of Reading with Mary Lee....She makes me laugh.