ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW 21

Happy National Poetry Month!

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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. For a variety of personal and poetic reasons, I have changed the project. The poems have lengthened to 15 lines...and now they decrease from 15 back down to 1. Hence the new name: ONE MORE OR LESS LINE CROW. 

To do so, simply:

1. Choose a subject that you would like to stick with for 30 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, corresponding 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 14 will have 14 lines. The poem for April 30 will have 30 lines. OR....invent your own idea! And if you start later in April, just play around however you wish.

4. Teachers and writers, if you wish to share any ONE MORE 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 all of this month's poems:

April 1 - High in a Pine

April 2 - First Baby Picture

April 3 - Nestling Crow Appreciates

April 4 - Thirty Days Old

April 5 - Young Crow with his Sparkling Blue Eyes

April 6 - Free

April 7 - To Persevere

April 8 - Watch Closely

April 9 - September Sight

April 10 - Black

April 11 - Winter Roost

April 12 - All Food is Good

April 13 - Know Crow

April 14 - A Helper Now

April 15 - Family Tree

April 16 - The Choice

April 17 - Build, Wait, Hope

April 18 - Mobbing

April 19 - Don't Doubt It

April 20 - Crow Parents

And now for today!

Twenty-One Crows, Ten Lines

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Have you ever wondered about those crows perching on the electric lines? Well, they are a little bit warm...and there is a looot of space to sit together. And...you can see everything when you're up high. 

Today's ten line poem is made up of rhyming couplets, and the last line is shorter than the rest. I did this on purpose. When you break a pattern in your writing, it changes how your reader reads, thus drawing attention to the change. In breaking this pattern, I hope for readers to slow down and think about how quickly it all goes. Crows flying...and everything else too.

Thank you for joining me for ONE 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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Pretending and Remembering...

Ghost and Jack

Photo by Amy LV

Students - I often think about the days before and after holidays.  Today found me thinking about the sheet I still use on a bed sometimes, the sheet with eye holes cut into it.  See, four years ago, I was a ghost for Halloween, back when our black cat Fiona was small.  And I haven't had the heart to throw the sheet away.  You can see it in the picture (taken today) above, with Jack and in the picture below, with Fiona.

Amyghost & Fiona, 2014

Photo by Someone LV

I so like pretending to be other things, and today, as I sit beside a lit pumpkin after the holiday, I like thinking about how special days come and go and how our memories remain.  This is not the first time I have done this...perhaps I am a wistful and nostalgic gal.

Not sure what to write? Think about the days before or after a big holiday or event.  Write from your point of view or from the point of view of someone or something else.  Switching perspective helps a writer understand something in a whole new way.

And I have a question for you to think about.  Just when did you realize that the speaker in this poem was a bed sheet, anyway?  I considered using the word sheet in the title...but then, instead, I chose to preserve a bit of mystery until a few lines in.  Remember this: as author, to a certain degree, you control when readers make various realizations.  These decisions are in your hands, my friend, so have some fun with them.

I very much look forward to the Rochester Children's Book Festival tomorrow! It is always a treat and an honor to attend this wonderful event in Rochester, NY.

Jama is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Jama's Alphabet Soup with a wise and beautiful call to vote and a poem by Judith Harris. Please know that each Poetry Friday, we gather together to share books, and poetry ideas all at one blog.  Everyone is always welcome to visit, comment, and post.  We invite you!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

First Flight - From My New Book!

Barred Owl, 2011

by Hope LV

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

Students - Today's poem is from my new book, FOREST HAS A SONG, illustrated by Robbin Gourley and to be published by Clarion next month.  You probably already noticed that this poem goes back-and-forth in a conversation between a mother and baby owl.  My own parents are very encouraging, and they always told me that I could do anything.  Maybe this is why I wrote about an encouraging Mommy owl.

Structure-wise, this poem is written in rhyming couplets (two lines at a time), each with one child line and one mom line.  One line only is not written in conversation, and that's stanza 4.  Why not?  Well, it's all sound effects!  Or as we say in poetry-land, it's onomatopoeia.

This owl verse also uses a technique called personification which is when a writer gives a non-human characteristics that are human.  You can see how this little owl has feelings just like a nervous-child might feel, just like I have felt before.

If you're about to sit down to write, you might wish to try thinking about a real feeling that you have had in your life.  Maybe a surprised or excited feeling.  Of course you can write about your feeling as it is...or maybe you will want to imagine what kind of animal might feel that same feeling and when.  Either way gives you a secret passage into a poem of your own.

I wrote FOREST HAS A SONG, including this poem several years ago, and it is very exciting (and hard to believe) that my book will be out next month.  To keep track of news on the book, I have created a little home just for it here.

When you write often, you come to realize which subjects you tend to write about over and over again.  Right now I am realizing that I do like writing about owls.  Here are two more owl poems: Owl and Cat, Why? (Could this poem be about the same owl as the one in "First Flight"?)

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To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Poetry Friday & Dandelion Grandmas

 Old Gray Ladies

Photo by Amy LV

Oh, this time of year!  I love the dandelions in spits and spots, on roadsides and decorating whole meadows.  Years ago, I didn't like them.  Now I do.  Part of this change is due to my husband's love of nature (which has rubbed off on me), and part of it is because we live in the country where all kinds of flowers and animals roam free.  And of course, now I see dandelions as food.  Our family has not made fritters yet this year...maybe tomorrow.

Students - this poem grew from our current yellow polka dot world!  And it also grew from somewhere else.  Years ago, I read a first grader's poem which will always stay with me.  Her poem compared a dandelion to a lion throughout the lion's life, ending with a "gray mane/the hairs blowing off."  This young child's image has rested in my heart for a long time, and yesterday it returned as I looked at dandelions and thought, "They're like little grandmas!"

It's a funny thing about writing.  We never know when an image, a memory, a word, a  dream, or a line from a poem or book will appear across our mindscreens, when it will whisper to us from years past, when such a surprise will echo, "Write me!  Write me!"  As writers, it is our job to listen and to write what we hear.  So students....listen.  Always listen.

For anyone who might have missed last week's announcement, many congratulations to J. Patrick Lewis, our 2011 Children's Poet Laureate.  Author of more than 50 children's poetry books and winner of the 2011 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children for the body of his work, we are lucky to have J. Patrick Lewis at our helm!

This week's Poetry Friday is at The Drift Record with Julie Larios.  Puff your way on over, wishing all the while, and visit poetry growing in the KidLitosphere!

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