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. Now, for a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now will decrease from 15 back down to 1. Hence the new name: ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW. We are still on the MORE part, but beginning on April 16, we go back down in line numbers. Yes, the logo and the crow pics will change too!
Sometimes life surprises us, and we can change our plans to match the needs at the time. I chose to change course rather than abandon this project, and after some good thinking last night, I feel happy about this decision.
If you'd like to play along, simply choose a topic that you'd like to explore for many days. It might be a subject that you already know a lot about or perhaps you'll explore something new.
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!
Sixteen Crows, Fifteen Lines
Photo by Amy LV
Students - In the second fifteen line poem of this month, I ask you to notice a few things about line breaks:
- The first stanza focuses on our main character Male Crow.
- The second stanza is only one line long. This is because the line illustrates an important moment. The moment of connection.
- The third stana brings the two paired crows together.
- The last line is only two words long. Short lines slow a reader down, and these two words, slowed down, illustrate the fact that not everyone knows: crows mate for life.
When you choose line breaks and stanza breaks, you conduct the silent-and-aloud-voices of your readers. Where would you like them to focus? Make a break right there.
One other thing - what joy I took in all of those -oo words!
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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