Fairy shrimp mask poem #NationalPoetryMonth #NaPoWriMo #SOL

Happy Poetry Month and Slice of Life Tuesday! This month I am tagging along with poet/author Amy Ludwig VanDerwater during what has become her annual National Poetry Month Project. You can click here to learn more about this straight from Amy! This year she’s writing and sharing a new poem every day, each highlighting a different poetic technique, but keeping the same subject. Her challenge is also a bit of an informal book study, as she’s using her fall 2017 release Poems Are Teachers (Heinemann) as her guide. Join us!

Today’s poetic form chosen by Amy is a mask poem. My subject is, and will be all month long, vernal pools. I’m zooming my lens in on one of the tiniest inhabitants — fairy shrimp.

To see some very cool footage of fairy shrimp in a local vernal pool that my talented friend Chris Renna shot, click here. He’s a high school art and videography teacher, as well as a knowledgable all-around naturalist and vernal pool junkie just like me!

I also hope you will stop by Live Your Poem daily to follow along the journey of the 2018 KidLit Progressive Poem, a fun annual collaborative project lovingly begun in 2012 by poet/author Irene Latham. The poem will magically, and quite literally this year, be growing right before our eyes daily during the month of April. This year we are following along the journey of a seed, who at the moment is having wonderful dreams! The process is fascinating and this year I am diving in for the first time with a line right in the middle of the month — April 18th.

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

This post is part of my personal National Poetry Month celebration. I hope you’ll join me in sharing your favorite poetic gems throughout the month of April whether they are written by you, your students, or another poet.