a blog about teaching, learning, reading, writing

For today’s poem, the last of the month, I decided to play along with NaPoWriMo’s challenge to write a palinode, which I’d never heard of before. A palinode is a poem that essentially “retracts” a position you’ve held in a previous poem. The draft of this was much longer, but I found that I didn’t…

The 3-5-3 haiku is surprisingly challenging to write. That’s just not many syllables! A couple of mornings ago, I was sitting in my classroom preparing for the day and realized I could hear foghorns from the river. morning mistblankets the cityfoghorn blares

Since the Poetry Sisters are celebrating poetry this month by writing “In the Style of Neruda,” I thought I’d play along with a quick ode. Ode to a Coffee Shop First, thesmellfruity, smoky, sweet Then, thetablethat one in the corner Then, thepeopletalking loud enough to overhear Finally, thenotebookopen to catch it all.

Today I decided to create a book spine poem. Once I chose the topic–from a book called The Reading Mind–I added the extra constraint that I couldn’t use any of the books on my teaching shelves, since there are so many good reading-related titles there. I wondered what would emerge if I scanned shelves that…

It’s only been in the past few years that I discovered haiku don’t always follow the 5-7-5 syllable count I was taught. In fact, according to Akita International Haiku Network, the most common haiku form currently is a 3-5-3 format, Today’s haiku borrows a topic and words from Laura Purdie Salas’s Digging for Poetry National…

Only a few days left of April’s National Poetry Writing Month, and while I have really enjoyed writing a poem a day, I will also be very grateful for the arrival of May 1! I had no ideas in my head at all today plus limited time, and I toyed with the idea of calling…

Today I’m playing along with a prompt from Ethical ELA to write about your dedicated “space to look and think,” a phrase borrowed from Sandra Cisneros’s introduction to House on Mango Street. This Space to Look and Think Curiosities: antlers, driftwood, stoneA wooden bowl, a hand-woven basketA cat or sixBeds, blankets, toys, trees of the…

I thought I’d have to give the golden shovel on Margaret and Molly’s poetry calendar a pass because I’ve never managed to write one, but then I saw Sonia using news headlines to write golden shovels for her poetry month project and I thought that might work better. I wrote down a headline that Cathy…

Today I’m playing along with Laura Purdie Salas’s Digging for Poetry National Poetry Month project. This is a fun challenge each day, as Laura draws a game board card with five words that could be possible topics and then shares a handful of magnetic poetry words. Using her Day 19 topics and words, I decided…