I’ve been preparing behind the scenes since January, working with eighteen different teachers, readers, librarians, authors, and poets to bring you their thoughts on poetry. For the rest of the month* this space will be devoted to their words. I’m excited to share these wonderful posts with you and to join in the discussion !
4/3 — Jennifer Gennari :: Opening the Heart of Characters Through Poetry
4/4 — Paul Hankins :: Coming Back to Poetry and Leaving the Textbook Behind
4/5 — Lee Wardlaw :: 8 Things I Learned From My Cats About Writing Haiku
4/6 — Caroline Starr Rose :: Words Inspiring Words — a Poem for Sharon Creech’s LOVE THAT DOG
4/8 — Lisa Taylor :: Three Poems and Why I Know Them
4/9 — Gabrielle Prendergast :: Using Acrostic Poetry Both In and Out of the Language Arts Classroom
4/10 — Paul Janeczko :: Poetry is to Share
4/11 — Rosanne Parry :: The Reluctant Poet
4/12 — Anne Greenwood Brown :: Victorian Poets and Paranormal Romance
4/15 — Jessica Bell :: The Vignette
4/16 — Augusta Scattergood :: Learning by Heart
4/17 — Robert L. Forbes :: Looking Out the Window
4/18 — Laurel Garver :: Stories that Sing — Poems with a Plot
4/19 — Amy Ludwig VanDerwater :: Poem Spools — Stitch by Stitch
4/22 — Jayne Jaudon Ferrer :: C’mon, Give It Another Chance
4/23 — Margaret Simon :: The ABC’s of Poetry
4/24 — Kathryn Fitzmaurice :: On Destiny and Emily Dickinson
4/25 — Kathryn Burak :: First Poems and My Mother — The Sleever and Muse
4/26 — Theresa Milstein :: Becoming
4/27 — Tamera Will Wissinger :: Why Poetry Matters
4/30 — Giveaway winner announced
*4/29 We will return to our Lucy Maud Montgomery Read Along discussion briefly before the final poetry post on 4/30.
Author Jama Rattigan has a great list of National Poetry Month events at her blog, Jama’s Alaphabet Soup.
Giveaway:
Enter to win this fun Emily Dickinson tote (which also includes information on Kathryn Burak’s book, EMILY’S DRESS AND OTHER MISSING THINGS)
and these three books: THE POCKET EMILY DICKINSON, Paul Janeczko’s SEEING THE BLUE BETWEEN: ADVICE AND INSPIRATION FOR YOUNG POETS, and my verse novel, MAY B.
I’m thrilled that May B is on the 2013-2014 DCF Award list for Vermont (https://sites.google.com/a/cesuvt.org/dcf-award/). I look forward to sharing this book with many of my students.
Thank you, Donna! I’m thrilled, too!
Looking forward to this month of poetry goodness! So many great topics. Thanks again for letting me participate.
Happy to have you, Laurel. And I’m excited to share your post with readers here.
I am so excited for all of the great Poetry Month resources that you and others are providing. I still have a haiku book that my reading group made in 4th grade and have loved poetry since then. I love teaching poetry because at first so many kids think that they hate it. I read May B. in preparation for the SharpSchu book club on Twitter- such a beautiful book!
Agreed. I spent a good half hour working through all the wonderful links Jama shared at her blog (see above, if anyone missed it).
I loved teaching poetry, too. One of the first things I had my students do was interview family members about their experiences with poetry. Almost always the they were negative — or turned negative once those family members outgrew “children’s poems.” I made sure to show my kids poetry can be about anything and can be for everyone.
Thank you for your kind words about May B. I’m very much looking forward to the SharpSchu book club.
This sounds like a fun month! 🙂 I’m a voracious reader of poetry, though I usually choose to express myself through prose now… But I feel that reading poetry is often more important to developing your ability to write well than reading other prose can be.
Have you read all LMM’s poetry? I’ve been thinking of this one this week: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-watchman/
“Reading poetry is often more important to developing your ability to write well than reading prose can be.”
I love this. Poetry brings so much with it that can benefit our prose — reading it is an exercise that can strengthen our writing …and our thoughts and lives.
Truly, I’ve read little of LMM’s poetry. Must remedy that! Off to read your link.
I’m late in the game exploring poetry through reading it and trying my hand at it, but I’m having great fun (especially with haiku). Looking forward to all that you will have here that I can glean from 🙂
Glad to hear you’re having fun. That’s what it should be about. I’m excited for you to read the fabulous posts that will run here this month.
My students are enjoying writing a poem each day. Check out their acrostics and blues poems at http://kidblog.org/sliceoflifechallenge/. Feel free to leave a comment.
Will do!
My students’ faces actually lit up when I told them it was National Poetry Month. I loved that! We’re going to be celebrating by reading novels in verse – May B. will be one of them!
Double hooray!
Fun idea! I’m looking forward to following along.
Happy to hear it, Rebecca.
Poetry scares me so I am posting on this this month as well at PragmaticMom.com. I am also composing a Spine Poem — first poem since grade school — at 100 Scope Notes.
Writing scares me, so we have something in common!
Great stuff — will need to use this. I use Kenneth Koch’s If Wishes Were Dreams to teach kids poetry but am always looking for more resources. Last year I heard David Elliott at a workshop at the NHSLMA Conference and it was amazing (he teaches at New England College) It’s hard when any form of writing becomes part of a rigid curriculum that works against a child’s intuitiveness…and I can rant about that for a long spell. And great to see you here Caroline!!
Fun to see you here, too! I loved using Paul Janeczko’s poetry books when teaching poetry — his “workbooks” or “manuals’ — not sure what to call them specifically. They have some poem examples and ways to encourage kids to write in the same vein.
HAILSTONES AND HALIBUT BONES was always a favorite to share, too.
Time to bring out those poetry books once more and put down the novels for a while:)
Hope you enjoy!
I love your poem “WORDS INSPIRING WORDS.” A number of years ago, when the book “Love That Dog” first was published, I read it aloud with my then preschooler grandson Jack and later with my school-age granddaughter Sarah and her sister Aryn. We all were moved by the book. How could you not be? We went on to read “Hate That Cat,” but “Dog” remained our favorite. Although they are now older, I’ll share your poem with them online.
I love this! Thank you for sharing with your grandchildren, and welcome!
My daughter now loves novels in verse (like I do!) and May B. was the first novel in verse she read. Now whenever I bring home books from the library she looks through my stack and checks for verse novels to steal from me. 🙂
Love this, Amy! Have you shared your verse novel with her yet?
Thanks for tweeting about the giveaway! I am now a follower on FB and your blog, as well as Twitter. 🙂 I do remember enjoying poetry in school, but my favorite poetry memory is from a public school I taught at years and years ago. We celebrated “poem in my pocket” day by having second graders carry around short poems in their pockets and read them when someone asked. We also memorized a short Shel Silverstein poem as a class and ran around the school, interrupting classrooms, shouting, “Poetry Break! Poetry Break!” Then we’d recite the poem and leave to much applause and fanfare. 🙂
I love this. Welcome!
I love this, too. And Poem In My Pocket was always one of the favorite days at my school.
This has been a great blog month, Caroline. Way to go!
Great post.