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An interesting prompt on Margaret and Molly’s poetry calendar is to rewrite an old poem. I decided to rewrite a very recent poem using a different technique to see how the poem might change. The poem is still inspired by a morning walk and the Ethical ELA prompt to write about what you might miss…

I discovered the Wordy 30 form, a spin on the game Wordle, from an Inkling challenge shared by Margaret. Trying to write a poem in just six words is challenging enough, but each word can only contain five letters. I found this poem in a photo I took a couple of weeks ago. Signs of…

This poem began with an invitation from Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, whose National Poetry Month project is a cycle of poems about 24 hours in the life of an old barn: “Allow a poem by another person to lead you to your own poem.” Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Valentine for Ernest Mann” is never far away when…

It has been a strange spring in Detroit. Delayed bloom due to extended cold weather, and then suddenly a string of 80-degree days that turned the city into an explosion of spring color overnight, beautiful but short-lived in the heat. This week will be cooler and hopefully prolong the bloom. This poem was inspired by…

Found poetry was on my mind after reading about Jone’s Classic Found Poetry Project. This found poem comes from the section of Linda Lappin’s creative writing guide, The Soul of Place, that focuses on what it means to be a flaneur and offers city-based creative writing exercises. The first line was found in Lappin’s words;…

Rereading a few of Pablo Neruda’s odes for yesterday’s poem put the form in my mind today. I tried to play along with a different poetry project today but ended up drafting several extremely bad poems that needed to be abandoned forever in the notebook. So I wrote a kind of not-ode. Ode to Bad…

This poem originated from a #Verselove prompt at Ethical ELA to explore a poet born in your birth month and write a poem inspired by one of their poems. I began with a poet with shares my actual birthday, but I didn’t feel inspired by their work, so I shifted to another poet born in…

This poem took a turn. It began with the intention to play along with Laura Purdie Salas’s Digging for Poetry Project. And then it decided to become a cinquain and play with a quotation from Clint Smith that LeighAnne shared a few days ago. You never know where a poem might lead. underskeleton moonlone wolf…

Pickles has a relentless play drive. He exhausts all eight of his cat friends each day (well, the ones who will play with him) and then wears the people out crying, climbing, clawing, and biting for more. Occasionally, he does manage to occupy himself, and even though it sometimes leads to a mess, the people…

My notebook is full of the detritus of the day. A prompt I picked up someplace. Write something important to you. An order I overhear in a coffee shop: small half lemonade, half English breakfast tea. Snippets of overheard conversation. Man with guitar to woman: We had a Norwegian rat infestation. Mother at the French…