A "Soon" Poem & a Guest

Albright Knox Gallery Map and Button

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Yesterday I had the good fortune to visit the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, a gorgeous museum that has been closed since 2019 for additions and new art and which has been opened this week with free admission. My friend had tickets and invited me to join her and another friend. Once again, I fell in love with art and with artists long gone, with they way humans connect across space and time with materials and words and dreams.

Today's poem is a free verse poem imagining something in the future, something I truly wish and plan to do. I imagine a future day for myself in this poem, based on a day I already adored...yesterday.

You might wish to try this sometime - write a poem about a day or an experience you plan to have. If you're not sure where to begin, simply start with the word Soon or the word Someday or the words One day. When we write our dreams and plans, we are more likely to make them come true.

Today it is a complete delight to welcome Jordan, a thoughtful fifth grade poet from Cayuga Heights Elementary in Depew, NY to The Poem Farm today. Last month, when I visited her school, Jordan and her teacher, Mrs. Alison Lorenc, stayed after the assembly, and Jordan was kind enough to share a peek into her notebook. Now, you are all lucky enough to read some of her poems yourself. Warm welcome to Jordan, and so much gratitude to Teacher Alison Lorenc and Librarian Tonya Bulas for all of the inspiration students receive every day in your care.

Jordan Thomson

Photo by Wendy Thomson

About Me: I am Jordan Thomson, and I am 10 years old. I am a 5th grader at Cayuga Heights Elementary. An interesting fact about me is I was born a preemie baby. I spent 17 days in the NICU at the hospital after I was born. My hobbies are dancing, gymnastics, chorus, video games, riding my bike/scooter, swimming, writing, reading, drawing, and painting. My favorite subject in school is ELA, but I like all of the other subjects too!

I have two dogs, a golden retriever and a pug. My dad is a police officer, and my mom used to be a physical therapist assistant. I also have a younger brother too. I love animals, and my favorites are elephants, tarantulas, and dragons. I am also a vegetarian. I hope to be an author one day.

I enjoy writing poems, graphic novels, and news articles. I often write my poems about things that occur in nature. I sometimes get my ideas by looking outside. I find it easy to write when the subject interests me.

Jordan's Notebooks

Photos by Wendy Thomson

Dandelions by Jordan

Photo by Wendy Thomson

Dandelions

by Jordan

Tiny green springs

jumping through the ground

reaching for the sky.

Small as a blade of grass,

unopened petals ready to fly.

In some time petals fly open,

just like a bird

spreading its wings.

Some pick them

out of the garden.

Others make a wish.

Many think they're gone

when they get blown away.

But just like a bird

opens its wings,

a dandelion will sprout

again.

You Don't Understand by Jordan

Photo by Wendy Thomson

You Don't Understand

by Jordan

People never liked us.

But this

shouldn' be true.

We're just misunderstood.

We're beautiful creatures

in some people's eyes.

We don't deserve 

to die.

Some of our species

love to

eat wood.

But they too

are misunderstood.

We're just like you,

we like to play.

To be specific,

in your house all day.

We can't believe all

the sprays and pesticides, 

more than one every day dies.

You can't just kill us,

we think it's

inhumane.

We're a part of

the ecosystem.

Isn't that great.

Why do you hurt

us, it's not fun

to be squished.

We don't like being

called pests.

You're always

hurting our

feelings every day.

Can you please

hear us out,

can you stop

hurting us.

It hurts us

inside and out.

Do you understand cockroaches now?

Elephants by Jordan

Elephants

by Jordan

Elephants running in one herd,

all communicating

with no words.

The blazing sun

hitting their backs,

only their ears

to prevent the sun's 

attacks.

Again, many thank yous to you, Jordan. The world is a richer and kinder place when we read poems by young people, and I appreciate your willingness to join us as a guest at The Poem Farm today.

Michelle is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup today with a celebration of sandpipers and fathers in word and art over at Michelle Kogan. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

May your summer be full of plans and dreams, writing about them and making them come true. Remember, my friends, dreams and plans can be small and still magical.

xo,

Amy

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Fine Antique Plates - Poem #7 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

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

Flowery Plates

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's drafts were written in the car.  Our family was going visiting, and so I wrote from the passenger seat.  You can see that the minutes of notebooking tally up to thirty-five, but this poem did take longer.  I spent a lot of time, eyes closed, just thinking and not timing myself at all.  Daydreaming the poem into life.  I also spent a lot of time playing with this poem in the typing stage.  In fact, these last two stanzas did not appear until I typed.

For today's verse, the fun came  in imagining walking around the rims of plates. This was my spark.  And then, making the flowers disappear...well that just made me giggle a bit.

Challenges included finding spring flowers with the correct number of syllables. This sent me to a bit of research as I didn't want to include late summer or fall flowers at all.

You may have wondered why those last two lines are so short, shorter than the rest of the non-flower lines.  I did consider keeping as one line.  But somehow, the punch line of the dishes being "simply white" felt like more fun with a longer pause.

Here are today's drafts.  You can see that I spent a little time trying to decide which object to choose.

Fine Antique Plates - Draft Page Spread #1

Photo by Amy LV

Fine Antique Plates - Draft Page Spread #2

Photo by Amy LV

Did you notice that the dishes in today's poemphoto are the same dishes as those in the THRIFT STORE LIVE logo?  

Yes.

I bought them.

March 31, 2014 Shopping Cart - AmVets

Photo by Amy LV

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A Wind Chime, Keys, and Photograph Poems

Welcome to Day 26 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...

As a part of this project, you may remember that along with the daily drawings, I will be posting at-least-weekly poems inspired somehow by that week's drawings.  Here is my fourth one.

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

Students - Today's poem grew from yesterday's drawing of the bottle wind chime that hangs on our family's porch.  The note from my sketch, "It is an old princess of a bottle, and she wears jewels made of glass" stuck with me.  I decided to let this bottle live in a poem as resurrected royalty, found by two children.  The poem is quite close to the truth of how this wind chime actually came to be, and I very much enjoyed spinning some pretty words around this recycling project.

Many cross-outs went into the making of this poem, as did many line break changes.  What began as quatrains turned into two stanzas of nine lines each and a final stanza with three lines.  Typing my work after fiddling with it in a notebook often helps me with these types of line break decisions.

Here is my drawing of the day, something from my purse.

Day 26 - Keys

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - I made today's sketch while sitting on the plane.  (Truth be told, I wrote the poem on the plane too!)  We were flying from Boston, Massachusetts to Fort Worth, Texas and I had not yet sketched for the day.  The seat in front of me was not so interesting, so I rummaged around in my purse and found keys.  This was an amazing feat, because I can never find keys.  But drawing them helped me hold onto them in a different way.  I was transported back to my own after school days, my first grade diary, a trip with my dad, my first car...all from a handful of jangling metal.  Who knew?

And now....a POETRY PEEK!

Today I am very excited to welcome second grade teacher Barbara Nadori and her young photographer poets from the Mast Way School in the Oyster River School District in Lee, NH..  They published their class book on Shutterfly (you will need to be a member to see the whole book). Here are a few pages from their beautiful book, and below the images you can read as Barbara explains how she and her students created such a beautiful volume.  Please know that every single photo and poem in this book is a stunner, and I chose merely to represent a variety of poem and photo styles.

Click to enlarge each photograph and poem.

Barbara Nadori, second grade teacher of these thoughtful photographer poets explains.

The process was actually much easier and resulted in much more than I had anticipated. I was interested in having the class take photos of everyday scenes in nature and outdoors around the school. I have a class parent who is a photographer. She came in and showed some of her work. She does wonderful projects around the world. She really only gave them a couple of tips: look for unusual angles to shoot; don't feel you need to shoot a whole figure; move the camera around. I asked the class to bring in cameras and I had some from the school. We went outside on a winter's day and the class dispersed and went around taking photos.

Later that week, we looked at the photos on a Promethean Board and the children picked two of their photos to write poems about. They were allowed to decide if their photos would be in color, enhanced color or in black and white. Once the photos were printed, we were ready for poetry writing. I showed the class a photo that I took and also modeled 5 or 6 different types of poems that I wrote about the photo.. Some were list poems, repeat-a-line poems, ones with metaphors and ones that flowed into one thought like a Haiku poem might do. 

It was amazing to see that in about 20 minutes or so, each child came up with a first poem for one photo. There was a minimal amount of revision, sometimes just looking for a more interesting word or avoiding repetition of the same adjective, etc. Over the course of the year, we have been noting interesting and descriptive language in the books we read. I think that inspired the class to use more imaginative language.

The project was fun and I think each child was proud of the results.

I feel so lucky to have a blog because it gives me the chance to read and share poems and artwork such as all of these by these second graders.  Thank you very much to Barbara Nadori and her students for joining us today.

Today is Poetry Friday, and Laura Purdie Salas is hosting the festivities for this last Friday of National Poetry Month over at Writing the World for Kids. Visit  to find your way to this week's poetry goodies around the Kidlitosphere, and don't miss all of the great Poetry Starter Videos she has shared for every single day of this month!

Next week I will share a few pictures from the Texas Library Association Conference.  That is where I am right now along with Sylvia Vardell, Rebecca Dotlich, Jane Yolen, Michael Salinger, Charles Waters, and so many of my other favorite writers and people!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

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