Happy National Poetry Month!
(For new poetry writing videos, see the COAXING POEMS tab above.)
Hello Poetry Friends! If you visited earlier this month, you may have noticed a change my National Poetry Month project title. For my National Poetry Month Project this year, I had originally planned to study crows and share a new crow poem each day of April with the number lines in each poem corresponding to the date. The plan was to write 1-line poem on April 1...and go all the way up to a 30-line poem on April 30. For a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now they decrease from 15 back down to 1. Hence the new name: ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW.
I invite you to join me in this project!
To do so, simply:
1. Choose a subject that you would like to stick with for many days. You might choose something you know lots about...or like me, you might choose something you will read and learn about throughout April.
3. Write a new poem for each day of April 2024 and decide if you would like to match your line breaks to the date in any way. You might correspond the number of lines in your poem to the date. For example, the poem for April 1 will have 1 line. The poem for April 30 will have 30 lines. You may wish to switch it up as I have, writing increasing-line poems from 1-15 lines for this first half of April and then decreasing-line poems for the second half of the month. OR....invent your own idea!
4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE OR LESS LINE... subjects or poems, please email them to me or tag me @amylvpoemfarm. I would love to see what your students write and to know that we are growing these lines...and our understandings of different subjects...together.
Below you may read the first poems:
And now for today!
Eighteen Crows, Thirteen Lines
Photo by Amy LV
Students - Have you ever seen a flock of crows chasing a larger bird such as a hawk or owl? They do this sometimes, chase and mob larger birds to scare them away from a nest or territory. Even though the hawk or owl is larger, the crows work together, bullying the larger bird by dashing at it and even picking at its feathers sometimes. Crows work together.
Two line breaks to notice. That one in the middle - He caws for backup - shows a change. First he was alone...next he will be with others. (Pardon the pun!) Also, note how the final line - away - stands alone. Such a short line can slow a reader down at the end of a poem, and I wanted this feeling of finality. Phew...Hawk is gone!
You can learn a bit more about crow mobbing behavior in this YouTube video from Nature Journal.
Thank you for joining me for ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW...
To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's happenings. Happy National Poetry Month!
xo,
Amy
ps - If you are interested in learning about any of my previous 13 National Poetry Month projects, you may do so here.
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One little poem that does so much good work with line breaks and rhyme!
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