Metal Rooster...You're the One!

Welcome to Day 23 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 23 - Garden Chicken

Click to enlarge the picture.

Students - Do you think that this garden chicken is friends with the real chickens?  I do! This chicken sits in my yard, right outside the front door.  He's our watch rooster, like a watch dog.  I think he's so funny that I may just have to draw him again soon.  There's a poem in this metal rooster.  Can you find it?  Actually, there may be twenty poems in this recycled rooster.  Or one hundred.

Recycled Rooster

Photo by Amy LV

Thank you very much to Joy Acey for holding a raffle to celebrate her blog - Poetry for Kids Joy - birthday!  I was the lucky winner of this POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL t-shirt featuring all 110 poets' names on the back.  I have two poems in this anthology, one about the feeling of being new on a team and one in which a young person sticks to vegetarian values.  When I got home from IRA late last night, I thought I'd try it on my new owl puppet.

Favorite New Owl Puppet in My Favorite New Shirt

Photo by Amy LV

Common Core or TEKS Edition

Available through Pomelo Books

Here are several of us at IRA, outside of the restuarant called FEAST, holding copies of different editions of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY.

Outside FEAST in San Antonio, TX

Back Row - Sandy Harrision, David Harrision, Mary Lee Hahn

Front Row - Janet Wong, Me, Sylvia Vardell, Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Photo by Mark LV

It was an honor and such fun to be a part of this panel - POETRY AND COMMON CORE CONNECTIONS - with the poets and educators you see below.  We had a good sized group of warm and energetic folks in our session, and the hour flew by. 

Our IRA Panel (L-R)  - Janet Wong, Me, Sylvia Vardell, & Joyce Sidman

Poetry Friday Blogger Friends - Ruth Bowen Hersey and Mary Lee Hahn

Photo by Mark LV

After the session, Joyce and I signed books in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion booth.  I felt so lucky to have the chance to chat with her one on one.

Signing with Joyce Sidman at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion Booth

Photo by Mark LV

Tonight, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

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!

Let's Not Talk About Bullies...

An Old Picture of Hope and Monster 

Photo by Amy LV

 

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

Students - I have been listening to the news lately, and there has been lot of talk about bullying.  The other day, maybe after too much news, this line popped into my head - Let's not talk about bullies.  Then, over the past few days, it kept on popping up in my head, and I could not shake it out.  So that's where this poem came from at first. Once I started writing, though, I realized that if I don't want to talk about bullies, there must be something else that I DO want to talk about.  And there is.  Kindness.

When we used to live in Amherst, NY, we had a neighbor named Nancy.  Nancy would feed birds right out of her hand, right out of the air, and she knew each chickadee by sight.  This past summer, our daughter Georgia volunteered at a wildlife rehabilitation center with our friend Margaret, and there she witnessed much kindness as people fed injured herons and orphaned possums.  Just yesterday, I walked into my credit union, and a man waited to hold the door for me to walk through.  Good people are everywhere, and I wish to celebrate them.

If you need a writing idea, you might try asking yourself...What do I NOT want to talk about?  What DO I want to talk about?  You might even want to begin with a line like, "Let's not talk about..." and see where it takes you.  (You can always take off that first line later!)

In terms of structure, you may have noticed that this poem repeats the word let's over and over again, usually at the beginning of the lines.  In my mind, I'm calling this an invitation poem as it invites the reader to do something...talk goodness.

You may also notice the circular structure.  The first two and last two lines are the same - I love doing that!

Today's picture is of our oldest daughter, Hope, a few years ago.  She is holding Monster, a wonderful cat who has since died.  We took stray Monster into our hearts years ago, and he returned the favor by loving some abandoned kittens we found in a ditch.  Sometimes animals are the most kind of all...

Congratulations to Diane Mayr (Random Noodling)....winner of last week's giveaway of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY!  Please send me your snail mail address, Diane, and I will get it off to you.

Over Sharing Our Notebooks, Peter Salomon is still visiting on the eve of the publication of his book HENRY FRANKS. Stop by and read about Peter's first notebooks and enter yourself in the giveaway of his new book - the drawing is tomorrow!

Katya is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Write. Sketch. Repeat. Visit there to see who's got what at today's poem party!

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!