My #NaPoWriMo Poem-A-Day project is Playing With Poetry. I am tagging along with Margaret Simon, Jone MacCulloch, Molly Hogan, and Mary Lee Hahn. We will be playing with Haikubes, Magnetic Poetry, Metaphor Dice, and Paint Chip Poetry (I raided Home Depot). I’m even throwing in nail polish color names as inspiration, just for fun! Play along, if you’d like! We are using the Twitter hashtag #playwithpoetryNPM to see what poetic mischief everyone is getting into.
A peek into my poem and process:
- Wetlands Spring is a poem that I’ve been playing around with for a couple of years. I revisit it from time to time as I spend more time in this fascinating and fragile ecosystem.
- Wetlands vary depending on what part of the country you live in. I live in New England and my #playwithpoetry playmate Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche of Louisiana. While I have not visited there yet, I can see from her posts that our wetlands are quite different. We are both inspired to write about them often. In surfing around her wonderful blog, Reflections on the Teche, a post of hers from 2013 caught my eye — Wetlands Writing. In it, she features a lovely poem by Tyler called Song of the Wetlands.
- Tyler’s final line is powerful and poignant. I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I hope he doesn’t mind if I borrow it for my final line.
- While I borrow a line from Tyler’s poem, I could easily have borrowed one from Wonderopolis’ WOTD #2105: What Is a Vernal Pool. Are your students learning about different ecosystems and habitats? Why not try a borrowed line poem from a Wonderopolis post about them.
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And now for….
On April 1, the Poetry Friday family launched the 7th annual Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem organized by author/poet, Irene Latham. (Click here to learn more.) Many of us have signed up to provide a line for the 2019 poem. Author/poet Matt Forrest Esenwine kicked things off with some familiar “found” phrases merged to get us going. Today’s line comes from Buffy. You may find her line here on her blog. Our little poem is now waltzing in the waves. Participants are having fun song lyrics. I was excited to provide the 14th line on April 14th. You can read it here. I hope you’ll join us to see what happens next! Here’s the itinerary for the rest of the poem.
April
1 Matt @Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme
2 Kat @Kathryn Apel
3 Kimberly @KimberlyHutmacherWrites
4 Jone @DeoWriter
5 Linda @TeacherDance
6 Tara @Going to Walden
7 Ruth @thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown
8 Mary Lee @A Year of Reading
9 Rebecca @Rebecca Herzog
10 Janet F. @Live Your Poem
11 Dani @Doing the Work that Matters
12 Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
13 Doraine @Dori Reads
14 Christie @Wondering and Wandering
15 Robyn @Life on the Deckle Edge
16 Carol @Beyond LiteracyLink
17 Amy @The Poem Farm
18 Linda @A Word Edgewise
19 Heidi @my juicy little universe
20 Buffy @Buffy’s Blog
21 Michelle @Michelle Kogan
22 Catherine @Reading to the Core
23 Penny @a penny and her jots
24 Tabatha @The Opposite of Indifference
25 Jan @Bookseestudio
26 Linda @Write Time
27 Sheila @Sheila Renfro
28 Liz @Elizabeth Steinglass
29 Irene @Live Your Poem
30 Donna @Mainely Write
Wondering and Wandering 