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Sally Murphy, Australian author

Writing Kids’ Poems: Five Exercises

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April is poetry month. In the USofA it;s called National Poetry Month, but here in Australia I’m just calling it Poetry Month, since I’ve been unable to figure out if the month is officially recognised as such here.

Anyway, whether it’s only a US thing or not, how wonderful to have a month which celebrates poetry! And, because it’s poetry month, I’ve been digging around looking for some inspiration for children’s writers who might want to have a try at poetry.

So, here it is. Five wonderful writing exercises to get you writing your own poetry. Some of these exercises are aimed at kids, but since all children’s writers are kids at heart, you’ll find plenty there.

So, get reading, and get writing. Poetry is good for the soul.

The List:
1. Write an exaggeration poem – exercise on the Poetry 4 Kids website.

2. Write a simple list poem, from poet Bruce Lanksy on the Giggle Poetry website.

3, How to write a Funny Poem – chapter three of How to write Poetry, by Roger Stevens, the whole text of which has been reprinted online.

4. Write a descriptive poem with Karla Krusky on Scholastic online.

5. Write a stretchy metaphor poem at the ReadWritePoem blog, which is posting a new poetry prompt every day this month.

If you know of a great poetry writing exercise that I’ve missed, let me know and I’ll start a new list for another post.

Comments

  5. I love writing poems. I feel most of my poems I write are ‘kids poems’. Thanks for the links, I will be visiting them.

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