HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 21

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

April 17 - untitled haiku

April 18 - The Right Thing to Do

April 19 - I Have Read it Six Times

April 20 - Bookmark

And now for today!

Students - Last week, when Lou and Nan delivered pies (probably with Frank), I knew that the neighbors would be happy...but I did not expect this thank you note. To be honest, it surprised me as much as it might be surprising you.

Writing is like this - when we do it a lot, it comes up with some of its own ideas.

You might have fun writing a letter or thank you note from someone not-you. I recommend it - in addition to being a good writing exercise, doing so helps us see the world from others' points of view.

Thank you for joining me on this twenty-first 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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Coaxing Poems 7: Choose a View

Hello again, my Poem Friends! Welcome to the seventh of ten poetry visits here at The Poem Farm. In each of these short videos, I will share a small something about poetry, and you will always be able to find the poem(s) I read below the video. If you wish, you may watch the earlier videos linked below:

COAXING POEMS VISITS:

Visit 1: We Are Libraries

Visit 2: Eat the World

Visit 3: Make & Break a Pattern

Visit 4: Abacadabra!

Visit 5: Tell Us a Story

Visit 6: Give it Space

Please make yourself comfy for Visit 7: Choose a View.

Students - Today's visit is all about choosing a view, deciding who to be and where to stand in any piece of writing. This is something we do in all writing, not just poetry. Do remember that most all of these writing teachings cross genres, and what we learn in our poetry writing, we bring to our prose. I so believe in bringing our poetry understandings to other forms of writing that I wrote a book about this idea - POEMS ARE TEACHERS: HOW STUDYING POETRY STRENGTHENS WRITING IN ALL GENRES (2017).

As you learned in the video, my poemdrafts for this week are all about the character of Little Miss Muffet. I wrote about her in many different ways, choosing a different view, or point of view, for each poem.

Draft, First Person as Miss Muffet

Photo by Amy LV

Early on in writing a poem, you will choose a view - or decide who to write as or to in your poem. Will you be yourself or a different character? Will you address someone in your poem or your readers directly? Will you write from a little distance? Remember that you may just make this choice without thinking a lot about it. But it still helps to understand what is going on behind the scenes of your and others' writing. Keep these possibilities in mind:

First Person - This is where you write in the I voice. You may be you or another, but you write using I. You might write AS someone or something else or you might write TO someone or something else using the word I in your poem. Writing TO someone or something not present in a poem is called apostrophe or a poem of address.

Second Person - This is where you write in the YOU voice. In certain lines of your poem, you speak directly to your reader with word YOU. This point of view invites the reader right into the world of your poem.

Third Person - This is where you write in the HE/SHE/IT/THEY voice. You are speaking about someone or something from a wee bit of distance. You are not the one speaking, nor are you speaking to a particular person object. Rather, you are telling ABOUT it.

Below, you will find four poems about Little Miss Muffet, each from a different viewpoint.

Here is my first person poem about Little Miss Muffet. You will note that I am writing AS Little Miss Muffet in the I voice. First person poems can be in our own voices, but when we write in the voice of another, such poems are called persona poems.

Below is another poem in the first person I voice, but this time I chose to write TO Little Miss Muffet rather than AS her. I am being me and using the I voice as I speak to Little Miss Muffet. I am using the word YOU, but not speaking to the readers. I am speaking to Miss Muffet herself. A poem that speaks to someone or something not actually here is called an apostrophe or a poem of address.

This next poem is in the third person voice. Notice how I use the word THEY to describe what Alice and Mary are doing. I am not writing AS them or TO them, but rather ABOUT them.

And in this final poem, I write in the second person, addressing readers using the word YOU.

Choosing a view - or point of view - offers a writer possibilities. When we write as someone or something, we will discover different ideas than when we write to or about this person or thing. I recommend writing a few different drafts, as I did, all around the same subject but taking different viewpoints for each one. Remember, no need to rhyme!

As you read your independent reading books or when you read books together, take a moment to consider the point of view. Who is telling the story? How does the point of view change the story?

Linda is hosting this week's Poetry Friday over at TeacherDance with an original acrostic poem about choices and kindness. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

Here's to a week filled with interesting, beautiful, quirky, and magical views. And if we have sad views, may they help make us kinder souls.

xo,

Amy

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A New Place...A New Voice

Snow Freckles

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Here in Western New York, the weather is jumping back and forth between cold and warm, snowy and clear, dark and sunny. But I can hear Winter packing her bags, heading off to visit others. Daffodils are nudging up, and robins will all be back soon. If you do not live in a snowy place, know that we snowfolks consider the sighting of a robin as an important sign of spring. While not all robins migrate, this is still an important moment for me....first robin!

Today I offer you two ideas to consider with your own writing:

1. Write in a different place. I am not saying that we need to take vacations to write; we can simply walk a few steps in a direction away from where we usually write to find a new perspective. Try writing outside. Try writing under your desk. Try moving to a different room. New impressions, sights, sounds, and smells give us new ideas. The more we feed our senses, the more ideas we will have. Today I walked around outside and wrote a bit in the chilly air after taking the photo above and the one below.

Nudging Daffodils

Photo by Amy LV

2. Write in the voice of another. Today I share a poem in the voice of Winter. This means that I pretended to BE Winter as I wrote. I imagined which images Winter might wish to press into her suitcase, and I thought about my different senses when I did so...this is how I thought of the "cocoa breath" line, probably my favorite.

Heidi is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe with a whole birthday party of fabulous poems. Please know that all are welcome each Friday as folks share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship.

May you find a couple of interesting new places and voices this week. Your writing can take you anywhere.

xo,

Amy

ps - It really isn't spring here quite yet. Snow is coming back this weekend!

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The Moon Visits a Triolet

Silver Button Moon for Everyone

by Amy LV

Students - Ah, the moon! She guides all of us, no matter where we are. And many young children can count moon among their very first words.  Of course they can. In a deep, dark sky, Moon shows us the way. The way she looks changes, and on clear nights, we can always find her. On bright moonlit nights, we do not even need a lantern or flashlight to find our way.

Many people look up at the moon and think about things: faraway friends and family, beauty, quiet secret thoughts. When we look at Moon and think, we are finding our way in a different way. She is for all of us, and so this poem is for Moon.

One decision I made while writing these lines was to write in the first person plural or we voice. My first draft of the poem was written in second person singular, speaking to you, not about we and us. Line 1 sounded like this:

The moon will always call you home.

instead of...

The moon will always call us home.

Try reading this whole poem to yourself substituting the word you each time you see we or us. What do you notice?

As I read the poem that way to myself, I realized that I - the speaker - wanted to share this experience with the reader. We all share the moon, and so this poem wanted to be more of a community (we) poem and less of a singular person (you) poem.

Choosing a point of view is an important job of a writer. I ask myself, "Do I want this poem to be ABOUT something, TO something, AS something, or WITH something?" This time, I chose WITH.

Today's poem is written in a particular form called a triolet. You will note that it has 8 lines and lots of repetition. In a triolet, lines 1, 4, and 7 are the same. Lines 2 and 8 are the same. And the rhyme scheme goes like this: A B a A a b A B. In poetry language, this means that lines 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 end with the same rhyming sound as do lines 6 and 8. Notice the matching capital letters for the lines which match each other.

It is true that the word whole does not rhyme with the words home and roam. However, it is a near rhyme, and because making sense matters more to me than rhyming, I went with it.

If you are interested, here are a few other triolets from past Poem Farm posts:

Wintertimes - December 20, 2019

Triolet for a Stone - May 24, 2019

Grandpa's Banjo - April 1, 2010

I do not always write in special forms, but sometimes I enjoy the fun of it. Forms feel like puzzles.

Irene is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem with Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Autumn," her own "Autumn puzzle," and an announcement about a new class Irene will teach titled Wild and Precious Writer. Please know that all are welcome each Friday as folks share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship.

xo,

Amy

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22 - Poems Can Be Written in the Voice of Another

Welcome to my 2020 National Poetry Month Project
See My Last 10 Poetry Projects HERE

Each day of April 2020, I will share three things:

• A dice roll of three word dice
• A video explaining one poetic technique titled POEMS CAN... You can also find these at Sharing Our Notebooks as part of my ongoing Keeping a Notebook project
• A poem inspired by one or more of the dice words and the technique

Here are All of This Month's Poems:

10 Years of National Poetry Month History at The Poem Farm

April 1 - Poems Can Go Down the Page

April 2 - Poems Can Play With Space
April 3 - Poems Can Tell a Story
April 4 - Poems Can Compare Two Things

April 5 - Poems Can Borrow a Pattern from the World
April 6 - Poems Can Define a Word
April 7 - Poems Can Rhyme
April 8 - Poems Can Not Rhyme
April 9 - Poems Can be Written in Stanzas
April 10 - Poems Can Ask Questions
April 11 - Poems Can Be Circles
April 12 - Poems Can Be Songs
April 13 - Poems Can List
April 14 - Poems Can Repeat Words and Lines
April 15 - Poems Can Spell a Word with the First Letters of Lines
April 16 - Poems Can Give Nonhuman Qualities to Humans
April 17 - Poems Can Include Sound Words (Onomatopoeia)
April 18 - Poems Can Repeat the Beginning Sounds of Words
April 19 - Poems Can Describe a Person, Place, Thing, or Idea
April 20 - Poems Can Emphasize a Word with a One-Word Line
April 21 - Poems Can Give Advice

And now, for today's words! 

Day 22 Words

Photo by Amy LV

Thank you to Heinemann for giving away a copy of my book POEMS ARE TEACHERS: HOW STUDYING POETRY STRENGTHENS WRITING IN ALL GENRES each week of April. I will draw names from the previous week each Thursday evening at 11:59pm, and I will announce a winner each Friday. Please leave a way to contact you in your comment as if I cannot contact you easily, I will choose a different name. This week's winner is named atop the post.

If you would like to learn more about other National Poetry Month projects happening throughout the Kidlitosphere, Jama has rounded up many NPM happenings over at Jama's Alphabet Soup.  Happy National Poetry Month 2020.

xo,
Amy

Antoinette is Wind

Photo by Amy LV

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