Greetings, all, and hoping you are blessed by continued energies for this end of National Poetry Month! April is a glory, and also, for those of us who are Poeting and Earthing to the utmost, kind of a long haul. Luckily, we have poetry to get us through Poetry Month. ; )
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Greetings, Poetry People! I know I've been hinting at this development for a while, and in fact the idea has been percolating since 2017--but this week, finally, the first modest weekly issue of WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine has appeared!
Why this project? I'm hoping it will meet a simple need that most writers have--to share their work publicly. I suppose there are writers who are content to write and then tuck their work away (looking at you, Emily Dickinson), but most writers I know are COMMUNICATORS, and it's not communication if your writing isn't seen by, well, the community!
I began writing poems early on, while growing up with a dad whom I watched speaking from the pulpit every Sunday morning to an audience (looking at you, Bob Mordhorst). I learned early on the power of connecting with others through sharing your words--but for poetry writers especially, and for young poets even more especially, opportunities to publish their work are few and far between. (After all, they're competing with all of us adults trying to publish OUR poetry for young people!)
So I hope WHISPERshout Magazine helps to scratch that itch to be seen and acknowledged by the community, and I hope it opens visibility to a very wide range of young poets, whose voices may not easily find a platform otherwise. To my knowledge, WHISPERshout Magazine is the only U.S. online site publishing poetry by kids 4-12, and I'm asking you, if you're willing, to help it...
First, please visit Issue 1.1 and enjoy the featured work. Your comments, as always, will thrill and encourage the young writers.
Second, come back here and offer any constructive criticism about format, style, content, in the knowledge that I intended to attach it to my WHISPERshout website and was somewhat defeated by the Squarespace blog platform. (If you know a young person with Squarespace chops who would be willing to teach me, let me know!)
Third, please share! If you are a teacher, think of this opportunity for your students to see their poems (with accompanying artwork and photo) published on the World Wide Web! If you are an author who does school visits, let those schools know that this opportunity exists! If you are a parent or grandparent sharing poetry with your young ones, encourage them to consider submitting!
Thanks for supporting WHISPERshout Magazine, and thanks to Margaret of Reflections on the Teche, who has already been an enthusiastic facilitator and sharer of her students' work--I hope to be publishing some of it soon...BUT WAIT! There's more!
Catherine @ Reading to the Core
Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche , again our host today, with the Progressive Poem as well! Whoo-hoo National Poetry Month!
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...
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| "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!
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