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.
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
And now for today!
Students - I am still trying to thread one poem to the next, and we will see for how long this works! Yesterday, Lou put on her red cloak to go mushroom hunting, so today we learn where this cloak came from. And in doing so, we learn a bit more about the life and heart of Nan too.
My friend Eileen is a marvelous quilter, and when my father died, I hired her to make quilts from his shirts. Now my mother, my sister and her children, my children and I are all able to cuddle up in quilts made from dad's stripes and plaids, remembering the man we so loved. In today's poem, I bring this - my own treasured memory and reality - to the truth of a fictional character. Know that you can do this. Bring yourself into the life of your character. Bring those you know into your characters. We can take what inspires us in life...and bring it into our art.
Today's poem has quite short lines, especially in the third (last) stanza. This is because I wish for readers to read those short lines slowly. As poem writers, we help readers know where to pause by lengthening (faster reading) and shortening (slower reading) our poem lines.
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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