A return visit #PoetryFriday

It’s Poetry Friday and Michelle Heidenrich Barnes is our hostess this week for the poetry roundup on her blog, Today’s Little Ditty. Perhaps you’ll join us? Michelle is unveiling the latest edition of her anthology of poetry, The Best of Today’s Little Ditty: 2017-2018. Click here to get your paperback or Kindle version today!

I am beyond thrilled because a tanka I wrote last year was selected for inclusion in this lovely volume. I’m chuffed, as the Brits would say, and proud to have my sweet hummingbird buzzing around so many of my favorite poets and their magical words. It’s the first poem I have ever had published anywhere.  Here is how my poem looked when I first shared it with the Poetry Friday family.  It was written in response to a challenge to look out the window and write about what you see.

I can’t wait to read the latest edition of the Today’s Little Ditty anthology from cover to cover and share the collection with my Kindergarten poets! Thanks for hosting this week, Michelle, and I look forward to meeting many of you IRL at NCTE next week! I’ll be presenting Friday afternoon about writing poetry from images along with Laura Purdie Salas and a team assembled by Wonderopolis. Come say hello!

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Day 23: Magnetic Tanka #NaPoWriMo #playwithpoetryNPM #tankatuesday #SOL19

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.

Red, tree, and magic magnets served as the spark for today’s tanka.

A cardinal barely visible from my classroom window.

A peek into my poem and process:

• I’m obsessed with cardinals. While they are common to our area of the northeast, I don’t see them every day. This makes my rare sightings that more magical.
• Yesterday, after a very challenging day, one appeared outside my classroom as I sat picking up the pieces of the afternoon. His song (bright red, so I know it’s a he) drifting through my classroom window lifted my mood instantly.
• Today’s poem is in the tanka form — haiku (5/7/5) with 2 bonus 7/7 lines referring back on the first three.
• I have yet to take a really good photo of a cardinal, so for now I’ll rely on a great shot in Word Swag.

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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 fabulous line from “The Rainbow Connection” (love that song!) comes from Penny Klostermann. You may find her line here on her blog. 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

Day 2: Paint Chip Tanka #NaPoWriMo #playwithpoetryNPM

Poetry Month is finally here! My #NaPoWriMo Poem-A-Day project is Playing With Poetry. I am tagging along with Margaret Simon, Jone MacCulloch, 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.

Today’s playful poetic offering is a paint chip-inspired tanka (5/7/5/7/7). I love the color green and am always amazed at the number of shades there are and their creative names. For more background information on the tanka form, click here.

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And introducing….

On Monday, 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 our poetry pal from Down Under, Kat Apel, dives in. I’m excited to provide the 14th line on Sunday, April 14th. I hope you’ll join us to see what happens! Here’s the itinerary for 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

Butterfly Dances #PoetryFriday

Happy Poetry Friday the 13th, everyone! Sylvia Vardell at Poetry For Children is our gracious hostess this fine Friday. Don’t miss her exciting news about the latest addition to the Poetry Friday Anthology series, Great Morning! Poetry for School Leaders to Read Aloud. I can’t wait to gift a copy to my principal for use during our new all-school Morning Mindful Moments and school meetings. So many of our Poetry Friday friends are featured in this collection. Bravo!

My poetic muse up and left me during the final weeks of the school year, but she’s back! She flittered and fluttered her way back into my psyche as I watered one of my garden beds the other morning. I planted milkweed seeds back in the spring in hopes of attracting monarchs, and had completely forgotten about them until I returned from a week’s vacation. Not only were the milkweeds there, but the visitors I’d been hoping for had arrived. Bee balm is also on their menu, too.

The seeds for this tanka came to me as I watched this beauty dance in celebration of summer’s bountiful pollinator feast. Now I’m on egg watch!

butterfly dances joyfully from stem to stem gathering nectar from midsummer’s bright blossoms if you plant it they will come

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I hope you’ll join Sylvia and the rest of us for some Poetry Friday fun today!

 

 

Patiently Waiting #PoetryFriday

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! This week’s celebration of all things poetic is over at Jama Rattigan’s always delectable Jama’s Alphabet Soup. She just took a batch of steaming hot blueberry muffins out of the oven. Help yourself!

And now for something completely different…

Jama is pining away for her first bluebird sighting. But I, on the other hand, am waiting for my first hummingbird of the season. Have you seen one yet? I captured this particular cutie in the act last July 4th. I’ve heard they have been spotted in the area, so I know they are on the way to my feeder. It’s just a matter of time. And so my tanka.

waiting patiently
for your first springtime visit
you move swiftly and
silently undiscovered
perhaps you have come and gone

My feeder has been out for one week now, filled with homemade nectar lovingly concocted in my kitchen. Every time I walk past a window or door that affords a view of the front garden where the feeder resides, I sneak a peek hoping, praying to see my darting diminutive friend once again. I know we’ll see one another soon, but the waiting is hard.

UPDATE AS OF SATURDAY 5/12 at 12:27PM — HE CAME!!!

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I hope you’ll join Jama and the rest of us for some Poetry Friday fun!

 

 

The Greens of Spring #PoetryFriday

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone! Brenda Harsham is hosting this week’s celebration on Friendly Fairy Tales and I’m joining in the fun by jumping in to the not-so-way-back time machine for today’s offerings. I’m resting up a bit from participating in Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s amazingly fun “1 Subject 30 Ways” project. Having written 30 poems related to vernal pools over the last month, I’m filling my creative well back up again and luxuriating in daily scribbles in my writer’s notebook with no agenda, no deadline.

I also had the enormous pleasure of participating in this year’s Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem in April, contributing line 18 to our gorgeously collaborative work, “Poet’s Jasmine, Blooming Lovely.” If you haven’t met our sweet Jas yet, I hope you’ll stop by Live Your Poem, where the project’s organizer, Irene Latham, will continue to care for our young poet.

Spring has finally arrived in the northeast, and I think it’s here to stay. In just one short week filled with intense, unseasonably high temperatures, the world around us has come to life.

This tanka from last spring feels appropriate for this week. The number of shades of green that appear each spring continues to amaze me.

Is there anything more cheerful then daffodils that greet you in the morning?

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I hope you’ll join Brenda and the rest of us for some Poetry Friday fun!