Suitcase - Poem #11 for April 2014 Poetry Project

LIVE!

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

Suitcase

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today my writing squeeezed into a small amount of time at the end of the day.  It was a busy and lovely day, and at the end of it...I was ready to sleep!  But no, it is Poetry Month, so write I did.  Instead of turning to my paper notebook last night, though, I thought in my head for a bit and then played with LiveTyping as you can see below.  I am sharing two of the "enlivenings" - the two I thought would be the most interesting to watch.

Can you see how I wrote the last line of the poem before the rest of it. I just liked that idea of the suitcase loving visiting Grandma more than visiting any other place in the world.  And so I just kept working and working the lines. 

You can see below how I decided that the poem should be in the past tense. When a writer decides on the tense of a poem, it's usually a good thing to keep that tense the same all of the way through.  I started with present tense but switched to past tense when I realized that this suitcase was not living with the same family anymore.

You might want to try LiveTyping yourself.  It's free and easy and lets you look back at your own process in an interesting way.  While I usually do not write on the computer, I do sometimes, and I like looking back at this.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to have author and librarian Vida Zuljevic sharing a Poetry Peek at The Poem Farm!  Please stop by there to read all about the many wonderful ways she celebrates poetry with students.  You will be delighted by her students' poems, and I know that they would love to read your comments too.

The winners of last Saturday's book giveaway are:

FOREST HAS A SONG - Bridget Wilson

THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR SCIENCE - Leigh Ann Eck

Winners - please send me an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com with your address, and I will mail your books sometime this month!  Stay tuned for the exact same giveaway tomorrow and every Saturday of April 2014.

Blog birthday girl Michelle is hosting today's Poetry Friday party over at Today's Little Ditty! Enjoy the festivities during this second beautiful week of National Poetry Month!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

My Suitcase - Eavesdropping Poems

Time to Unpack

Photo by Amy LV

Students - once again, I would like to encourage to to keep your ears open. If you are in a public place and hear an interesting snippet of language or a curious comparison or a clever mishmosh of words, you can tuck it in your brain and save it for later writing. I overheard such a line yesterday...on an airplane!

Last night I came home from two days of teaching and working with wonderful teachers at Fowler School and Green Meadow School in Maynard, MA. Waiting for our plane to arrive at the gate, I found myself listening to a little girl talking with her mom. She said, "We'll go get our suitcases from the little roller coaster now." It was one of the cutest sentences I'd ever heard, and I knew that it would form the beginning of today's poem. Great lines are dropping from the sky every day, but our ears must be ready to catch them!

I still may play more with this one. Part of me wants to try a free verse poem using this little girl's words as well. If I do, I'll share it in this space. And if you try sprouting a poem from an overheard line, please let me know.

As for roller coasters, I'm not a rider. But I do love Marla Frazee's book ROLLER COASTER.

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If you've ever wondered how roller coasters work...here you go!

It's February 1!  This means that there are only 2 weeks left until we find out about the winners of the 2012 CYBILS!  Here, again, are the poetry finalists.

Many congratulations to Kristine O'Connell George for winning Bank Street College's Claudia Lewis Award for EMMA DILEMMA!

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