Work...and Trust the Mystery Too

Self-Talk in Sky

Drawing by Amy LV

Students - Where did this little verse come from? I honestly do not know. Last evening I was writing in my notebook and jotted the line I tried to do a thing I did not think that I could do and then I just kept following word after word after word and those wordy breadcrumbs led me to the small cottage that is now this poem.

I do write by hand, and writing the drafts for this poem ended up as quite a messy experience with crossouts and writing over writing and words spilling from page to page linked by arrows and lists of rhyming words. There was work...and too, there was mystery. See, even though I did the work here, I am still somewhat surprised by the poem. (Where on earth did the kite come from?) Writing is indeed mysterious like this. We do work, and still we can be surprised by which lines choose to land in our hearts and on our pages.

This week I suggest writing a bit each day in a notebook, write bits about what you see and think, write about your wonders and hopes. List words you love, and listen to the part of you that is whispering good ideas. By doing this regularly, you will always have writing ideas just waiting for you to shape into the pieces you are meant to write.

This week, Sarah Grace is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup over at Sarah Grace Tuttle with happy news about her redesigned website (including resources for teachers!) and an original poem titled "Hitchhiker". Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

I wish you the strength to hear the words that help you become the you you most wish to be.

xo,

Amy

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Poems from Mind Pictures

A Bouquet of Owls

by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem grew from a picture I saw in my head.  Earlier this summer, I imagined a bouquet of owls (the mind is a funny place) and then, a few days later, drew them in my notebook.  I keep thinking about the image, and so today I decided to write a story poem connected to it.

Today's poem is a poem present for my husband Mark. This coming Monday we celebrate 24 years of marriage, and thanks to him, I am lucky enough to learn about birds (including owls) on every single day of my life. My book with Dylan Metrano, EVERY DAY BIRDS, is even dedicated to Mark:  For Mark, the bird lover I love... I am grateful.

Mark and Amy - July 29, 1995

(Must find photographer's name!)

Sometimes, when we turn off our devices, sit or lie still, walk or stand in one place, we can imagine pictures and places that we have never seen in real life.  Any one of these can become the start of a poemstory.

Notebooks are perfect word collectors, and they are perfect image collectors too. I am working to collect more of the images that fly across the frame of my mind. Watch your own screen.  See what pictures appear. Some may be memories. Some may be pictures never seen by anyone before, the pictures of your own picture-factory we call the brain.

And as I often say, a person can always give writing as a gift. Happy Almost Anniversary, Mark!

At Sharing Our Notebooks, my other online home, I am so happy to host Art Educator Matthew Grundler. Please visit his post about visual journals...and be inspired. There is a fabulous book giveaway too ending Sunday.)

Margaret is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Reflections on the Teche along with a with a fabulous title-steal and a hauntingly beautiful poem. Please know that we gather each Friday, sharing poems and poemlove, 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.

Apology - A Poem of Address

Wood Thrush - After Hitting a Window

Photo by Amy LV

Doing OK

Photo by Amy LV

Flown Away!

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem tells the story I share with a little wood thrush, a story this bird and I lived together just yesterday morning.  It is a story with a happy ending, but I at first I could not know how it would end.  I was worried about this pretty bird who hit my living room window, worried about this small body so beautiful in its feathers.

My poem above is a poem of address, a poem which speaks directly to someone or something, in this case - a small soft wood thrush.  Have you ever found yourself talking to something that cannot talk back to you?  Sometimes I talk to keys and socks that I cannot find, asking them to come out and make themselves seen.  Sometimes I talk to my kitten.  Sometimes I talk to my car.  In a poem of address, you can come right out and talk to whatever, whomever you wish.

So many congratulations to the wise and wonderful Jacqueline Woodson, who this week was named by The Poetry Foundation as our new Young People's Poet Laureate.  Author of BROWN GIRL DREAMING, THE OTHER SIDE, SHOW WAY, LOCOMOTION, and many more books for young readers, Jackie is a gift to us all.  I can't wait to see what she does for poetry...for children...for humanity...in her new position.

It is summertime now, and I wish everyone many beautiful adventures outside. Don't forget, though, to take your notebook with you!  You may lalready know that I am collecting ideas for summer notebooking ideas over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, and I invite you to visit and share your own idea too.  It is great fun to learn about all of the ways people find writing and drawing ideas - 66 and counting!

Today I'd like to especially thank third grade teacher Kim Doele and her students from Wealthy Elementary in East Grand Rapids Michigan.  These students have shared so many great posts and ideas at Sharing Our Notebooks. Many readers have already told me through Twitter how excited they are to try these students' notebooking ideas.

Below you can find links to these students' specific posts at Sharing Our Notebooks. Big hugs to all of you!

Inspire Yourself with Walks and Books - by Finn

Write About People You Love to Be With - by Eoghan

Begin With the Day's Weather - by Greta

Write as Something or Someone Else - by Hayden

Compare Two Ways to Do Something - by Julia

Write About a Subject You're Interested In - by Mo

Look at One Object in Many Different Ways - by Teagan

Write Two Poems about Alike/Different Things - by Alyssa

Get Writing Ideas at Wonderopolis - by Henry

Buffy Silverman is hosting today's Poetry Friday extravaganza over at Buffy's Blog. Head right on over there to join in the poetry fun!

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Writing, Brains, and Notebooks

Writing is Exploring is Writing

by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem is really a how-to poem, but not a clear cut how-to such as "How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich."  Rather, it is a poem about how to do something that is in a way concrete, and in a way, mysterious - writing.

You will notice that I compare writing to walking a dog.  That's because when I walk my dog, I never know where she will want to go.  We have discoveries and adventures.  Such a sense of discovery and adventure is writing at its best too.

When I started writing this poem, I had no idea where it would go.  Rather, I just followed my pen and mind and there appeared the tracks.

Trust yourself.  If you don't know what you wish to exactly write, just get started, and see where you go.   Allow your pen to find its way into the brambles of metaphor and the secret paths of simile. You may well find a hidden room.

Today I am tickled to welcome English Language Arts director, Mary Wheeler, from St. John School in Houston, Texas with this zany Poetry Peek!  Enjoy!

Thank you, Mary, for e-mailing me these joyous pictures to share here today.  If anyone tries this way to display poetry, or if you have another way that you like to share students' poems, please let me know as I would love to feature it.

Now that our brains are feeling colorful, I would like to extend an invitation to all. In the past week, my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, has lit up like a bonfire. It started when Kimberley Moran of iWrite in Maine wrote and asked me about hosting some ideas for student notebooking over the summer.  She wrote the first one, and now we already have 27 entries!  All are welcome to contribute, and you can see the list of how to post here and the list of entries already up here.

Here's how easy it is to share.  Just think of one way you get inspired to write in your notebook (or on your napkin or on your computer or on your arm...) and then write up a paragraph sharing that idea/exercise. Then, snap a photo of a page (or napkin or screen or arm...) and e-mail or Google Doc it to me with a brief bio. Then, I put it up with all the others, and we all have a wondrous list of writing exercises to inspire not only our students...but us too.

All are welcome - students, teachers, writers, artists, mechanics, chefs, jotters, scribblers of all types.  The more variety, the merrier.  I welcome you to share and hope that you will.

Here's an easy Tweet if you just want to copy and use it -

@amylvpoemfarm is collecting #notebook ideas! Share your short paragraph, photo, bio here to join the fun - http://bit.ly/1LbP1K1 #writing

Matt Forrest is hosting today's Poetry Friday party at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme...with wonderful news.  Please stop by, enjoy all of the poetry offerings, and congratulate Matt on his book contract!

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U is for URGE

U is for URGE

Photo by Amy LV

Verbs are the most important of all your tools. 

They push the sentence forward and give it momentum...

flail, poke, dazzle, squash, beguile, pamper, swagger, wheedle, vex.

- William Zinsser, ON WRITING WELL

Students - Today's word, URGE, can be used as a verb, or it can be used as a noun.  You can URGE someone to make you a cake and you can have feel an URGE to make a cake yourself.  There have been a few words this month which can be used as either verbs or nouns, and today I chose the verb form.

As soon as I began thinking about the word URGE, I thought about what a mighty little word it is.  Just say the word aloud - URGE.  Doesn't it pack a lot of punch?  That strong feeling is what urged me to write today's poem about verbs.  I just began listing and thinking, playing with verbs I love.  You may notice something about the rhyme in this poem too.  (It's not just at the ends of the lines!)

You might wish to keep a page of mighty verbs in your own notebook, or maybe you will want to keep a verb list in class to share.  Either way or even if you don't do this, always reread your work asking, "Is there a mightier verb that would better push this sentence?"

Congratulations to the winners of the Rebecca Kai Dotlich books over at my other blog Sharing Our Notebooks! Lori Faas won BELLA and BEAN, and Renee LaTulippe won LEMONADE SUN! Please just send me an e-mail with your name and snail mail address to my e-mail at amy at amylv dot com.

Today at Sharing Our Notebooks, author and poet Suz Blackaby is sharing her notebooks as well as a neat writing exercise. Stop by to read her words and to enter the giveaway for her NEST, NOOK, & CRANNY.

Guess what! The Poem Farm almost has 200 followers in that little grid of photos over to the left! Thank you, everybody! It is helpful for me to show publishers that people read this blog, and I appreciate your public show of support.

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!

Announcement: New Blog Debuts Today!

Notebook Stack

Photo by Amy LV

Student & Teacher Friends - Today I would like to invite you to my new blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, a blog for just that.  The first post is a peek into my own notebooks, but after today, you will be able to read bits from all kinds of notebooks...maybe yours!  

Please join if you wish, and come back each Tuesday to learn about all kinds of ways to use a notebook.  My hope for this new blog is that it will give us all ideas and fuel for our writing journeys!

The Poem Farm will continue in this space each Friday, and possibly more.  I look forward to hearing about how you celebrate poetry in your classrooms, and I hope to see you in my new space too - Sharing Our Notebooks.   If you would like to share a page from your notebook - or if you know a notebook keeper of any sort who might wish to do so - please drop me a line at amy at amylv dot com.

Happy beginning to another beautiful year!

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He Did Not Doughnut in Poem #330

Students - one reason it is handy to keep a writer's notebook is because it will safely hold your ideas until you need them.  For a few weeks, I've had this little nugget in my notebook: I only eat doughnut holes. Why did I have this weird sentence in my notebook?  Who knows?  But the weird sentence became the weird poem, and that's just how it works sometimes.

So, my advice is this.  Get a notebook.  Love it up with doodles and glued in things.  Copy your favorite quotes and stuff in some photographs.  Decide if you like to write in pen or pencil, cursive or printing.  Watch your life unfurl across the lines, and get to know yourself.  Write sloppily if you wish and neat if you wish, but writewritewritewritewrite.  

Do all writers keep notebooks?  Nope.  I'd be a liar if I told you they did.  But a notebook can sure come in handy when the brainwell runs dry.  Plus, rereading old notebooks is a source of great joy and humor.

Hmmm...suddenly I am hungry for a doughnut.

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Baby Owl Won't Say "Who?" in Poem #314

My New Paperchase Notebook

This is poem #4 in Story Poem week, a week of poems that tell stories.

Students - Yesterday I had no idea what I would write about.  I sat down at my old wooden desk, and immediately my eyes lit upon this brand new owl notebook.  As soon as I saw the cover, a "What if...?" popped into my head.  "What if a baby owl refused to say Who?"

The words from this poem also hailed from the new Newbery Medal winner, MOON OVER MANIFEST, by Claire Vanderpool.   In each of the sections of "Hattie Mae's News Auxiliary," Hattie Mae promises to share "all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres by next week..."   Surely this repeated section has been echoing in my writing head.

The baby owl here appears in another poem, and perhaps this is why today's poem wrote itself easily.  That other poem, "First Flight," will appear in my first book, FOREST HAS A SONG, illustrated by the wonderful watercolorist Robbin Gourley and published by Clarion Books next fall.

Teachers - for another post about asking "Why?" visit Ann Marie Corgill's blog, AM Literacy Learning Log where you can read her thoughts about this question.  Ann Marie is the author of OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE, a book I highly recommend if you teach writing to primary students.

Shop Indie Bookstores

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I Believe - MyPoWriYe #113

Notebook Page - Pod of Pentapi

by Hope, Georgia, & Amy LV

Some words are just plain fun, and 'octopus' is one of those words.  Today I began writing a different word-fun poem, and somehow this one just showed up on the page.  'Must be those pentapi in my bloodstream pushing their way to the surface.  After writing today, my daughters and I sat by the side of our town pool and drew all of these silly pentapus pictures.

Students - The neat part about writing this poem was substituting a different prefix for 'octo'.  Now I want to try listing all kinds of words with prefixes and suffixes and play a little mix-up game.  Give it a whirl, and if you write anything interesting that you would like to share, please send it to me at amy at amylv dot com, and I would love to feature it in an upcoming blog post.

What animals swim in YOUR blood?

Tomorrow is Poetry Friday!

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MyPoWriYe Day #38 - My Notebook

Notebook Stack

Photo by Amy LV

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