Guest Blogger: Lorraine Marwood
Lorraine Marwood is a fellow Australian children’s author and poet – and also an excellent verse novelist. Enjoy her post – an exercise in poetry writing. Welcome Lorraine.
Patterning a poem
This is often a great technique to both read poems from other poets and also to provide a way into a new poem of your own.
Here is one of my poems:
Drop Tail Lizard
on the grey leaves
and grey bark
garden mulch,
swimming like a sardine
like a tadpole
silver pin with a jeweled eye.
Tells me the day is warmer,
summer that much closer
until that white cat running
running with a small under belly and back legs
of lizard humming
from its hunter’s throat.
Drop
it
cat.
© Lorraine Marwood
‘Drop tail Lizard’ is just such a starting point.
A poem is often a simple observation of life, a detailed observation. A poet looks and mulls and captures such a detail in a word picture.So grab a word camera and observe.
Look outside.
Watch a car, a neighbour, a tree, a bird, the clouds, the way the dog chases a squeaky toy.
Now you have your subject matter – here’s a simple format.
Line 1 Name the object of the poem- use my poem as a template
Line 2 and 3 Bring in location or setting ‘ on the grey leaves/grey bark/garden mulch’
Line 4 and 5 action that the object is doing
Line 6 and 7 Tells us something about the world around me
Line 8 and 9 now for the conflict- what happens to upset this slice of life?
Line 10 and 11- make the last words of resolution have more impact by sitting one word on one line, like stepping stones.
Thanks for dropping in, Lorraine. If you would like to learn more about Lorraine, you can visit her online here or here. And keep dropping back each day in May as I continue to celebrate all things poetry and the release of Pearl Verses the World.
Guest Bloger: April Wayland
I often write a poem in response to a prompt. Perhaps a friend has an anthology about bugs and needs a bug poem. Or a magazine wants a poem about a specific topic. Or I am writing a novel-in-poems and my main character is mad at her father. I have to write a poem showing why she is mad at him.
My next picture book, NEW YEAR AT THE PIER—A Rosh Hashanah Story
comes out in June. One of my friends is making poetry postcards and wanted me to write a poem for one of his postcards. I thought I’d write one that somehow tied into the theme of my book, which is about a wonderful tradition during the Jewish New Year called Tashlich. During Tashlich, you think about the mistakes you’ve made in the past year, apologize to the people you’ve hurt, and then take a piece of bread and throw it into a body of water for each of these mistakes. It’s a wonderful tradition. In my town, 200 of us gather at the ocean, sing songs as we walk to the end of the pier, then toss our bread to the fish below. I wanted to write about saying I’m sorry.
So, first I did what my mentor, Myra Cohn Livingston, taught me…I brainstormed. Myra called this brainstorming the “raw spillage of emotion”—just writing everything you can think of about the topic. I keep writing, trying to get something that I feel passionate about…because I’m going to spend a few hours or days or weeks with this poem—I’d better feel passionate about it!
And actually today my friend apologized to me for knocking over a potted plant and breaking the pot. Honestly, I didn’t care for the pot, and told her this. So even though it was an amazingly fresh example of exactly what I wanted to write about, there wasn’t anything that stirred my blood in this.
I kept digging…and remembered when my friend Debi, who raises California Desert Tortoises, an endangered animal, gave me one as a present. I was thrilled. Her name was Clementine and Debi told me to take good care of her because she could live to be 150 years old. Oh, my! I chopped up broccoli, kale, apples and spinach for her, made her a home in our living room and took her outside to graze on our back lawn. We tortoise-proofed our backyard so she couldn’t wander, and I picked her fresh sugar snap peas—her favorite food—from our garden.
But one day she stayed out in the rain. And the next day she had a runny nose. The following day her eyes didn’t look clear. And the next morning she was dead.
I stood above her, paralyzed. My heart felt wooden. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I’ve killed her. I’ve killed this creature. I’m a terrible person. What will Debi think of me? I sat down on the wood floor next to my beautiful tortoise and wept.
I didn’t want to eat for days. I couldn’t sleep. I was a murderer. What could I do? How could I make it better? How could I undo this horrible, awful mistake?
I wrote about it. I prayed. I finally called Debi one night. “Do you have a little time? Can I come over and talk to you about something?” My voice trembled.
“Yes.”
I drove to her house and parked. I trudged to her door. I lifted my finger. I pushed the doorbell. I waited in darkness. The porch light flashed on. Debi opened the door. She wrinkled her forehead. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, and then I burst out crying. “Clementine died.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Oh, dear. How?”
“I think she died from being in the rain,” I said. “I am so sorry. I am so, so, so, so sorry.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, hugging me. “Oh, honey, these things happen. It’s not your fault.”
We talked. I left feeling limp. I also felt better. But I still missed my little dinosaur cow who grazed on my grass.
A few days later Debi called. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You know how I told you that Clementine would live to be 150 years old?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “She was pretty old when someone gave her to us. So I’ve been thinking. When we gave her to you, maybe she was 149 years old.”
So…I wanted to write a poem about all this. And I wanted to write a SHORT poem. How?I went to my poetry book shelf and pulled down a favorite anthology of poems, The Scott Foresman Anthology of Children’s Literature, co-edited by my teacher, Myra Cohn Livingston. I flipped through and found a lovely poem that said so much in so few words:
Who Am I?by Felice Holman
The trees ask me,
And the sky,
And the sea asks me
Who am I?
The grass asks me,
And the sand,
And the rocks ask me
Who I am.
The winds tells me
At nightfall,
And the rain tells me
Someone small.
Someone small
Someone small
But a piece
of
it
all.
Then, using this structure, I tried to talk about Clementine and feeling bad and about forgiveness. As you’ll see, I ended up changing the structure a bit…but it’s wonderful to have someone else’s poem as a jumping off point.
Here’s my poem:
MY TORTOISE DIEDby April Halprin Wayland
The grass asks me,
And the sugar snap pea
And the cat asks me
Where is she?
The trees tells me
She caught the flu
And the rain tells me
You did all you could do.
Like a dinosaur cow
Little dinosaur cow
My dinosaur cow.
You grazed
on the lawn
And now
you are gone.
The grass tells me,
we wish she lived,
And the winds tell me
We forgive.
===================================================
Now it’s your turn:
1) Think of a subject you’d like to write about.
2) Write down everything you can remember about this topic—every detail, every smell, every incident that comes to mind.
3) Choose one incident among all that you’ve written which fires you up.
4) Find a poem you like and type it into a file.
5) Now, using your subject, copy the poem’s structure, meter, use of sounds, and word choices.
6) Read it aloud. (I often read my poems to Rosie, the world’s oldest dog.)
7) Read it again. And again. Change what doesn’t work.
8) Revel in it. Enjoy it. Do a happy poem dance.
9) Share your poem with your friends and family.
© April Halprin Wayland
April Halprin Wayland has published three picture books and an award-winning novel in poems, GIRL COMING IN FOR A LANDING. Her poems are frequently published in CRICKET Magazine and in numerous anthologies.
She is the recipient of the Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award, Penn State’s Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor Award for Children’s Poetry, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Magazine Merit Award six times for Poetry.
She’s also written, performed and produced a rollicking CD/MP3 album (which includes 17 poems, 5 stories and a fiddle tune) http://cdbaby.com/cd/ahwayland which won the National Parenting Publications (NAPPA)’s Gold Award for Storytelling.
Her high-energy lectures and poetry workshops have been popular across the US and Europe. A founding member of the ChildrensAuthorsNetwork.com and TeachingAuthors.com, she has been an instructor in UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program since 1999.
April and her family love animals. They have a dog, two cats, four turtles, a tortoise and probably 947,001 frogs. NEW YEAR AT THE PIER—a Rosh Hashanah Story, will be published June 2009. Visit her website: www.aprilwayland.com
Guest Blog: Sheryl Gwyther
This little gathering is a tribute to a bird at the bottom of the popularity list – a bird we can’t do without. Sheryl Gwyther May 6 2009
CROW
Glossy black, green & purple sheen,
piercing pale eyes see all.
Pariah of city, suburb and street.
Scavenger of schoolyard waste,
your only threat walks upright
as shang-hai, rock & bullet you taste.
Intelligent, clever & bold, old crow,
you alone know how to eat toad
and live.
(c) Sheryl Gwyther
Humans have an almost universal opinion about crows – noisy, ugly, dirty, creepy, pests – the list goes on in many languages. But there are many who recognise the status of a crow … whether from the grandeur of a winged mystical being or the depths of an efficient garbage disposal unit.
Family CORVIDAE
Genus Corvus
CROW
RAVEN
JACKDAW
ROOK
CROW
SAYINGS
As the crow flies. European origin
I have a crow to pick with you. Old English
Jim Crow. American
To eat crow. 1812-1814 Anglo-American war
Crow-eaters. South Australians
Crow’s nest. Sailing term
A gathering of crows is called a MURDER
CORVINE HUMOUR
Q. Who brings Christmas presents to all good little crow boys and girls? Santa Caws
Q. Where do crows congregate to have a cold one? The Crow Bar
Q. What do crows like to drink in the morning? Caw-fee
Q. What sort of crow sticks to a wall when it hits it? Vel-crow
MYTHOLOGY
Crows and ravens appear in mythology, from Ancient Greece and Rome to the Native American, African, Hindu and Aboriginal Dreamtime legends.
In the cave paintings of Lascaux, birds are drawn that looks very much like crows.
An Inuit myth tells of how the Raven invented light by throwing chips of mica in the air.
Shakespeare mentions them in half of his plays.
Crows are mentioned in the Koran.
AUSTRALIAN CROWS
Little crow Corvus bennetti
Torresian crow Corvus orru
Colombo crow Corvus splendens
Australian raven Corvus coronoides
Forest raven Corvus tasmanicus
Little raven Corvus mellori
I write junior fiction rather than poetry although, like all poets, I love words. When I wrote the Crow poem I thought of what crows look like, what they do and how people feel about them. Also I knew about one very special trick crows have been intelligent enough to learn up here in Queensland.
Then, because there is so much to know about crows I collected more information and made an artist book to put it all in. It’s called Crow.
You can visit me online at http://sherylgwyther.wordpress.com/ or
www.sherylgwyther.net
Thanks for visiting, Sheryl.
Verse Off Week 2
My apologies for being little slow to get your responses up – I am without internet at the moment, thanks to my phone line dropping out for no apparent reason. Am waiting on repairs. In the meantime, I am sitting in a hotspot, writing this post and putting up yesterday’s responses.
So, here goes to the results of yesterday’s Verse-Off.
The wonderful Kathryn Apel said:
Mum,
Can I please
have a lollypop?
The one right
at the top.
It’s for
you!
Trudie Trewin’s offering:
Look Mum
A lollypop tree!
Do you think
If I pick a leaf
And plant it deep
Where it’s warm and sunny
We might grow
Our very own
Lollypop tree?
Please?
J.R. Poulter wrote:
The colours swirl
Like entrapped rainbows.
Release them – you choose
And Mabel said:
Lolly popsicals
branching
like
a tree
of sweetness.
I see
my mother’s face
where two together
make a heart
of love
Lovely, ladies. If you would like to see the responses in rhyme, pop over to Kathryn’s Blog. And come back next Sunday for a new photo and opportunity to contribute.
Hopefully I will be properly back on line by then.
blog tour day 10
Phew! Welcome the tenth (and final day) of my blog tour to promote Pearl Verses the World.
Today I am guest blogging at Robyn Opie’s blog about getting published. I hope to see you there.
Thanks so much for following my tour. Although today is the last day, the fun continues throughout May with all sorts of activities to promote Pearl Verses the World, so do keep calling by.
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