HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 17

Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)

Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.

Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

April 1 - First Poem

April 2 - My Name

April 3 - Red

April 4 - Frank

April 5 - The Big Bad Wolf Had Been a Stray

April 6 - 8am on a Sunday

April 7 - Her Real Name is Orla Lola Bruin

April 8 - My Neighborhood

April 9 - Mushroom Hunters

April 10 - From Coat to Cloak

April 11 - Speaking of Coats

April 12 - Forgiveness is a Gift

April 13 - Here

April 14 - Running Home

April 15 - Nan's Apple Pie

April 16 - I Ask Nan How to Make Apple Pie

And now for today!

Students - Happy International Haiku Poetry Day! How beautiful and perfect to devote a special day to haiku here, as the Haiku Foundation's website says, "in the heart of the United States celebration of National Poetry Month."

As I often do when preparing to write a different form of poem, this morning I again read some of the poems in the archive of the Haiku Society of America's Haiku Award winners, in memory of Harold G. Henderson. 

I always learn so much about haiku from my friend Robyn Hood Black, artist, poet, and author who inspires me with her own haiku and knowledge of this form. You can read Robyn's haiku thoughts and ideas as well as some of her own haiku here at her website. Teacher friends, please note that Robyn generously includes many resources, including haiku teaching resources at this link.

Today's haiku brings us back into the forest as it is now time for Lou and Nan to deliver apple pies.

Thank you for joining me on this seventeenth day of HELLO MY NAME IS...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

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A Found Object, A Few Words

Spring Memory

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Some of you may have heard about the big winter storm we had here in the Buffalo, NY area last month. My mom's neighborhood was buried snow and felt so many heavy winds that a few of her trees blew to the ground. Last weekend, my husband went and cut them down and up. In one, he found the nest you see above on our woodpile. It is woven of sticks and rootlets and even a few ribbons that Mr. Cardinal found and brought to Ms. Cardinal who did the building.

My mom remembers last spring, the cardinals flying in and out of the cedar. So quickly one season moves to the next, so quickly an old cedar is here and then only a memory. And now the nest has traveled to our home where we admire it.

I knew that I wanted to write about this cardinal nest, but how? Should I write an ode to nests? A letter from the cardinal? I finally settled on haiku, a form that asks for few words, the form where less is always and truly more. 

To put my mind and heart in the mood of this nest and genre, I read the poems in the archive of the Haiku Society of America's Haiku Award winners, in memory of Harold G. Henderson. If you ever wish to write a certain type of poem, it helps so much to first read many examples. This puts a writer in the spirit of the writing, and I believe that I would not have written today's poem without having climbed up onto the shoulders of great haiku writers through reading.

Thank you to my friend Robyn Hood Black, artist, poet, and author who inspires me with her own haiku and knowledge of this form. You can read some of her haiku thoughts and her own haiku here at her website.

Susan is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Chicken Spaghetti. (I am unable to link to this post yet, but will as soon as it is available.) Please know that all are welcome each Friday as folks share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship.

May nature offer your a surprise gift this week.

xo,

Amy

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or as part of a group with your teacher.

Look First. Wonder Next.

Shaggy Parasols in Our Yard

Photo by Amy LV

Students - This is a very small poem. Perhaps it is a haiku. Maybe it is just a little nature poem. Whatever it is, it is a bit of writing about one thought I had this week. 

My husband Mark and I were walking through our yard looking at the mushrooms of the day. These shaggy parasols (Isn't the name great? Mark always teaches me the names.) were hanging out underneath some spruces in our yard. Sometimes they grow in rings, and people call these "fairy rings." It is thought that fairies or elves or pixies dance in such places. The ones in our yard were all lined up. My first thought was that they looked like they were waiting together, like children at school, or adults at the grocery store.

I kept thinking and wondering about those mushrooms all week.

My friend, poet, artist, and blogger Robyn Hood Black is a haiku expert, and she generously shares a lot about haiku here at her website and blog. I wanted to write a small haiku-ish poem about these mushrooms, and so I turned to Robyn. One resource she shares that I read and found very helpful and inspiring is The Bare Bones School of Haiku by the late Jane Reichhold.

At times, it feels good to write with just a few words. At these times, the tricky part is choosing just the right ones. Considering the mushrooms, what I have learned about poetry, and what I have learned from Robyn and Jane, here are a few things took into my brain as I wrote these few lines:

• A poem can be short.
• A poem does not need to rhyme.
• A poem does not need capital letters.
• A poem does not need punctuation.
• A poem can include an observation.
• A poem can include a thought or question.
• A poem/haiku can have two parts. (This poem includes a statement and a question.)
• A poem's title can give extra information. (If a reader doesn't know what shaggy parasols are, the title will help.)]
• A poem can play with sound in small ways. (The short 'u' sound in the title repeats.)

I welome you to play with any of these ideas this week. For starters, you might do these three things:

Go outside.

Look at something.

Think and wonder about it.

Write a poem with those two parts - your observation and your thinking/wondering.

Be free in your writing!

And remember: do not eat mushrooms that you find. Only mycologists (mushroom experts) can do this without getting sick...or even dying.

Close Up of Shaggy Parasols

Photo by Amy LV

Catherine is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup at Reading to the Core with an abecedarian about writing poetry. Please know that all are welcome each Friday as folks share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship.

xo,

Amy

Please share a comment below if you wish. 

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

SPARK & Maine Animal Haiku

by Cathy Stephens Pratt

Students - Every once in a while, I participate in SPARK: ART FROM WRITING, WRITING FROM ART, and I just did so again.  Here's how it works.  SPARK is a 10 day exercise.  On Day 1, founder Amy Souza pairs up artists and writers.  Each gives the other a piece of art or writing to work from, an inspiration piece.  Each has ten days to make something new from the piece he or she receives.  And on Day 10, the artists and writers reveal to each other what they created.

It was such fun to be paired with artist Cathy Stephens Pratt for this round.  I adore her whimsical piece, and I loved imagining walking around inside, wondering what might be inside the house. As I wrote, I imagined this little house, offering each of us what we most desire and need.  It is a magic house!

Thank you to Cathy for the inspiration...and thank you to Amy for organizing us.

If you ever do not know what to write about, try writing from art.

It is a pleasure to welcome Second Grade Teacher Kim Oldenburgh and her young poet artists.  Please enjoy this beautiful slideshow of haiku and watercolors, all inspired by Maine animals.

Please Click the Square Above to Enlarge

The winner of last week's book, LUBNA AND PEBBLE, written by Wendy Meddour and  illustrated by Daniel Egnéus, is Jone.  Please send your snail mail address to me at amy at amylv dot com.  If you did not win this book, I highly suggest checking it out at the library or purchasing it for yourself or classroom or library.  It is beautiful, tender, and wise.

Michelle is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Michelle Kogan with a celebration of our 22nd US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith and this week's poetry offerings from all around the Kidlitosphere. We gather together each Friday, and all are always welcome.  

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If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Photography, Winterberry, Haiku

Winterberry Branch Near My Porch

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Did you know that a poem can be very short?  This short poem is simply an image (winterberry branch) and my personification of that image (calling birds for breakfast).  It's a haiku. 

The Poetry Foundation explains haiku - "A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time."  This branch right outside of my front porch here at The Poem Farm is full of berries now...but likely not for long once the birds find it.  So this IS a specific moment.  Here I fell in love with bright red against white snow and brown barn and branches....

If you are on a school break this coming week, or even if not, keep your eyes open for images specific to the season where you live.  Find a moment, a specific moment when the season seems to define itself to you.  Write or draw or take a picture.

Right now, as I type to you....about 20 goldfinches are enjoying the feeder outside my window. Another moment!  Our world is very beautiful, and we can often find this beauty in small and surprising bits.

Over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, you can find a very cool peek into Julie Patterson's notebooks. Leave a comment...and you just may win a book!

Buffy is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Buffy's Blog.  She's offering up a fun personal holiday poem and a current political poem by our Young People's Poet Laureate Margarita Engle.  Please stop by if you'd like to visit many different blogs, all celebrating poetry.  We meet weekly, and everyone is invited!

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If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Painting - Poem #18 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!
Learn about this, my April 2014 Poetry Project, HERE!

Painting by Dorothy Quinan, 1970

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Yesterday, we went to a biiiig thrift store in downtown Buffalo.  We came home with many goodies, and I took many photographs. This painting made me feel serene and summery, and so I chose to write a haiku to go along with it.  Haiku is a form that I do not attempt often, and so today is a bit unusual for me.

I wanted today's poem to show the contrast between winter in the real world and summer in a painting, where the seasons never change.  With only seventeen syllables, this takes lots of experimenting.  I wanted to show the painting, and so color seemed the best way to do that.  And of course, I always adore simple color words with simple nouns.  

Here in my poemdrafts, you can see many of the possible lines that I tried out and threw out.  If you'd like to read a few tips about writing haiku, check out haiku world.

Picture - Draft Page Spread #1

Photo by Amy LV

And when I finished and sat to type, something felt eerily familiar.  Yes.  The red. And the chickens.  And the gazes (glazed).  I somehow channeled a few words of William Carlos Williams's The Red Wheelbarrow in very few lines and in the same order...without even knowing it.  I tip my hat to you, WCW. Thank you for living in my very blood.  Those mentor poets - they just travel around inside of us all the time.

Painting Close Up

by Dorothy Quinan

Photo by Amy LV

Back of Painting 

by Dorothy Quinan

Photo by Amy LV

Guess what?  I bought a painting.

Me & My New Painting!  

(I bought a frame too!)

Photo by Mark LV

The winners of last Saturday's book giveaway are:

FOREST HAS A SONG - Linda A.

THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR SCIENCE - Victoria W.

Winners - please send me an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com with your address, and I will mail your books sometime this month!  Stay tuned for the exact same giveaway tomorrow and every Saturday of April 2014.

Robyn Hood Black is hosting today's Poetry Friday festivities over at Life on the Deckle Edge.  All are welcome, and if you'd like to know more about Poetry Friday, read Tabatha Yeatts's great April 2014 explanation over at Savvy Verse & Wit.  Happy Poetry Friday!

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Falling Pears & September Chalking

Today is Chalk-a-bration, a celebration of poetry in chalk rounded up each last-day-of-the-month by Chalk-a-bration founder, teacher and blogger Betsy Hubbard. Stop by Betsy's blog, Teaching Young Writers, to visit other chalk poems and hey - why not chalk your own and share with us!

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students -Today's poem is about exactly what our family is doing at exactly this moment in time.  Picking pears.  And apples.  This fall's harvest at The Poem Farm is glorious, and we are gathering all we can from branches and ground.  Yesterday we filled four bags of pears, and today I will chop some up and dry them in our dehydrator for snacks through winter.

You will see that today's poem is short, does not rhyme, and simply stops a moment in a season.  It is a haiku, I suppose, though it does not beat out the 5/7/5 syllables we may first consider when thinking about haiku.  Yesterday, as I watched our children climb this tree and shake the branches, I thought, "It is raining pears!"  I will try to post a video of today's shaking as it is quite amazing to watch so many pears fall at once.  One must get out of the way!

Watching seasons carefully for signs and beauties and surprises is a wonderful way to sneak up on a poem idea. Try it. Look outside.  Walk in a natural place.  What is changing?  What strikes you?  Try writing a few short lines of your observation.  Let it be short.  Include only what matters.

If you would like to read more about haiku and Issa, a well-loved haiku writer, this book with story and translations by Matthew Bollub and illustrations by Kazuko G. Stone, is a great place to go.

Read More at Indie Bound

Our Pear Tree

Photo by Amy LV

My Sweater Pocket

Photo by Amy LV

Happy Chalk-a-bration!  Thank you, Betsy!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes.

Visit Sharing Our Notebooks to peek in all kinds of notebooks.

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Eraser Dust, Poetry Art, and Chalking!

Learning
by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem comes from a childhood memory of a young second grade friend who used to collect eraser dust.  I've written David's pencil shaving collection before, yet this idea of collecting small bits of others' trash is still fascinating to me.  Just imagine if eraser dust could talk...what we would learn!

Today I am tickled to welcome teacher Jennifer Beach and her third grade students from Glenwood Elementary School in West Plains, Missouri. Earlier this week, Jennifer sent me an e-mail with photographs of her students' beautiful poetry art.  I asked her if she would be willing to share her class's process for their foil art, and lucky for us....she was willing!  I turn you over into the artistic and thoughtful hands of Jennifer Beach.  Please click to enlarge any of these wonderful images.

Photo by Jennifer Beach

While looking for ideas for National Poetry Month this last April I came across Find a Roll of Foil and knew I had to use it in my class in some way.  

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Long story short, my class and I read this poem and talked about it. We studied all the normal things that you do with poems and then we decided to find a roll of foil for ourselves!  What wonderful imaginations the kids have. 

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Our art teachers at Glenwood have made a similar project with their students before and helped me to figure what glue to use and I also found this art teacher's blog when I searched for foil scratch art that was really helpful.  

We have many times made line drawings and decorated them with markers so this was a natural progression from that.  We brainstormed with partners all of the things you could make from foil, and we made two lists: things we've made from foil and things we'd like to make from foil.  (After the project we also made a list of recycled items that could be used to make art like bottle caps, paper tubes, tin cans, etc., and I challenged them to create something new over the summer using some of these items to share with me in August!) We decided instead of making a foil sculpture we wanted to make pictures to hang on the wall.  The kids used their ideas to help them draw pictures.  

We looked at Mexican folk art and abstract art to get ideas for Kalina's cat, and as you can see, she took the ideas and ran with them.  It was a great learning experience for all the kids since we did a lot of this kind of research for all their ideas.

Cat by Kalina

Photo by Jennifer Beach

The pictures were drawn by the third graders onto a piece of plain paper in order to plan their artwork. I asked them to stick with a simple outline that had one large main figure in the middle.  We then drew the outlines onto pieces of tag board.  We used Elmer's Glue All to trace the outline and all major lines and set it aside to dry overnight. 

The next day we covered each entire piece of tag board with Elmer's Glue stick (the purple kind that dries clear is really the best because they could see where they had already spread glue) and placed a piece of foil on the top.  We used cotton balls to press and smooth the foil down and then Q-tips to fine press around the glue lines.  Once that was done, we used the handle end of a paint brush or a dull pencil to etch the designs in the figures.  Many of the kids wanted to see examples of different line designs so we looked up artwork by famous artists that incorporated lines into their art.  

After they finished their lines, we covered the entire pieces in black liquid shoe polish, let them dry for a few seconds, then rubbed them off with paper towels.  The other third grade class used the solid shoe polish and instead of wiping it off just left it on.  Theirs turned out a darker almost blue look, like old silver. Emilie's ladybug from that class is an example, and they were just as pretty.  Both classes had just exceptional work.  

Ladybug by Emilie

Photo by Jennifer Beach

The kids were so excited and just loved it, but it was a time consuming project.  I was really impressed that my 9-year-olds finished such fine pieces of artwork, and we had a lot of fun reading the poem and looking at The Poem Farm.  They have been so excited with our poetry month.  We also made: poetry paper bag kites, spinner poems, hand print poems, and poetry mobiles.

Poetry Paper Bag Kites

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Poetry Kite by Hayden

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Poetry Art

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Spinner Poems by Ethon and JD

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Hand Print Poem by Adrianne

Photo by Jennifer Beach

Poetry Mobile by Katie

Photo by Jennifer Beach

We had a blast, and I enjoyed seeing the kids so engaged.  The last week of school we made summer journals to take home with them and they all signed each other's journals and wrote messages to each other.  

What a very fortunate class to have made these works or art and these memories together. Thank you, Jennifer and students, for sharing with us here today.  I am truly grateful.

Today, Betsy is hosting both Poetry Friday and Chalk-a-Bration over at Teaching Young Writers.  Head on over to find links to other chalk-y poems and all manner of poem-love. Here is the haiku that folks will be reading on our front step today...

Poem Rock

Photo by Amy LV

Poppy View

Photo by Amy LV

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New Baby at Heart Rock Farm

Nora Nuzzles Her Baby

Photo by Amy LV

Mother and Child

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Look who's here!  Our newest addition, yet-unnamed.  This morning I woke up to (my husband) Shepherd Mark's voice, "Nora gave us the most beautiful white lamb last night.  It looks like it's a week old!"  And so she did.  And so it does.  Welcome to this new child, a bouncy haiku on an emerald of a day.

In celebration of new life and another joyous spring morning, I am thrilled to share this beautiful Poet-Tree made by Susan Kellner and her first grade students at Harold O. Brumsted Elementary in Holland, NY.  Some of you may remember Susan's lovely poet-tree from 2012!

A Vibrant Poet-Tree Grows
Photo by Susan Kellner

Close Up of Leaves

Photo by Susan Kellner

Thank you to Catherine Johnson for sharing my fiddlehead poem from FOREST HAS A SONG at her blog today.  On Wednesday, she'll share Shepherd Mark's recipe for a delicious fiddlehead frittata, this year's Mother's Day brunch at Heart Rock Farm.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!