sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Poetry Friday: Limerick Day with a twist

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It’s Poetry Friday and I had planned to come up with a post, and didn’t get around to it. SO it has been sitting there on my to-do’ list while I did a thousand other things.

And then a friend tagged me in this Facebook post:

and, after I stopped giggling, I knew I had to share this.

Maybe you needed the laugh too, so I hope you ‘get’ it. But also, I spent a good part of this week running writing masterclasses for talented young writers – and the topic was poetry. One of the messages I always try to get across is that sometimes breaking the rules – of format, or of expectations around a topic, or of what is or isn’t a word – is the thing that makes your audience take notice.

Here, on Limerick Day, this haiku demonstrates my point perfectly.

Poetry can make a difference.

Now I am off to take some deep breaths of tired satisfaction after a week that included poetry, and much more, in various satisfying combinations. Then I’ll spend some time browsing the other Poetry Friday posts, via the round up on Robyn’s blog.

Happy Limerick Day!

Poetry Friday: Small Things

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Last  Friday I wrote about the big thing I was getting ready to do – swim the 3.6 km around the Busselton Jetty, in an annual race.

On Sunday I did that big thing – and came out of the water feeling accomplished and pleased that, in spite of having an

After the race.

interrupted preparation/training this year, I still did a time I was really happy with.

But, that big thing, while it was lovely, was topped off by a seemingly small thing.  After the swim, I ran into a friend (hello Julie!)  I hadn’t seen for at least two years, who had also swum in the event. That was lovely in itself – but she told me that she had read my poem last Friday, and that while she was swimming it was in her head.  Isn’t that just a lovely thing – to think of my swimming poem being in another swimmer’s head as she swam?

Later that day I had a text message from my mum (hi Mum!), who lives two hours away – and she wanted to tell me that she’d dropped in on my Poetry Friday post too, and that she’d been thinking about the poem – and me – while I was swimming. So there was my poem swimming around in Mum’s head too!

On Tuesday I posted my weekly Teacher Tuesday post, which was, perhaps unusually, not about poetry this week.  But on Wednesday, at a work meeting, a colleague (and friend – Hi Jane!) told me how much she loved that post – and wished she’d had such a practical strategy when she was a classroom teacher. What a generous piece of feedback.

And later on Wednesday, a swimming friend (who probably isn’t reading this) stopped me after another meeting to make sure I was going to come swimming this morning – which I will be doing just as soon as I get this post up.

Four small moments – small things – that each, for me, meant a lot.  People taking the time to say ‘I see you ‘ or ‘I see your work’.  Maybe those small things meant so much because in the midst of all that loveliness I was  swimming through a super busy week, with some tricky things to navigate. Or maybe those small things meant so much because, actually, small things are really big things in disguise.

I don’t know. But when I sat down to think about what to post today, I decided that small things could be encapsulated in small poems.   And I remembered hay(na)ku – which I also call six word poems, and which I have shared before. So here are two hay(na)ku  dedicated to those people who brightened my week with their small gestures:

A

poem swims

across lyrical seas.

2.

Your

unexpected  compliment

made my day.

 

And then, because I had written two, I was on a roll and couldn’t help but write two more, about other small things that made me smile this week.

3.

A

stranger smiles.

Two tiny butterflies

My heart fills.

4.

Butterfly

flutters by:

a living flower.

If you haven’t guessed it , a hay(na)ku is a poem with really only one rule – it has six words (1 word, then two then 3). Small poems, butt hey can say an awful lot.

Now I’m off for that first-thing-Friday swim. How lucky am I? And later I’ll be swimming across the Poetry Friday waves, checking out what my poetic friends have to offer this week. The round up is hosted by  Molly – swim on over and ride those waves.

 

 

Poetry Friday: Metamorphosis Poems

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It’s Poetry Friday which means it’s the day when bloggers from all over share poems and poetry fun. I started 2021 very keen to do this every week – and have not done very well at that goal. But today is the day to try to get back on  track.

One of the reasons I have been so busy this year is that, in the space just a few months, I was asked to create a resource for teachers to teach poetry, then wrote and compiled that resource and – voila – it was published.  A big rush to get there, but I am really happy that schools all over Australia have now got this book, and hopefully are finding new ways to share poetry in their classrooms.  If you haven’t yet admired the beautiful cover, here it is again:

(You can find out more about this book, here at the PETAA website)

One of my goals for this book was to share a range of poetry forms which can be used in the classroom. Some of the forms are new but others are better known – with my own little twist.

One of those forms is the diamante – a commonly known form using seven lines (explained by Kenn Nesbitt here).  I started with the diamante, changed the rules and created Metamorphosis Poetry. Here’s an example:

Frog

Tadpole

fishy tail

swim wiggle squirm

growing legs and lungs

climbing onto land

hopping free

Frog

(copyright Sally Murphy, 2021)

Can you see why I called  it a metamorphosis poem? That’s right- because it follows the transformation (metamorphosis)  of a tadpole into a frog. It doesn’t follow the strict form of the diamante – which  specifies word classes for each line (nouns, then adjectives, then verbs and so on). Instead the pattern here is only around numbers of words – except for the first and final line, which move from juvenile to adult:

Line one: one word – the juvenile form

Line two: two words

Line three: three words

Line four: four words

Line five: three words

Line six: two word

Line seven – one word – the adult form

This could be replicated with other animals which metamorphose (caterpillar/butterfly; grub/beetle,; larva/salamander. BUT, you could equally move outside of the animal world  to write about  other transformations. Like this:

Poem

Thought

tickling mind

forming phrases, patterns

demanding my writerly attention

lines, verses, stanzas

pencil flying

poem

(copyright Sally Murphy, 2021)

Other pairs that come to mind are story/book, bricks/house or tune/song – but I’m sure you can come up with others. I challenge you to have a go!

And, if you want to try another form,  Catherine, who is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup  is sharing an amazing example of the Abecedarian. Go check it out!   Happy Poetry Friday!

 

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