This month’s Slices of Life are dedicated to the love of poetry. Each day of March, I’ll be celebrating a living poet by creating a Cento poem from the lines of their poetry, along with links to more information about each poet as three of my writing circles intersect this month: The Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers, Open Write with EthicalELA, and The Stafford Challenge.
I’m kicking off the celebration with Sophie Diener, who wrote Someone Somewhere Maybe. She’s a poet who teaches and resides in Ohio, and she started writing in journals from the age of five or six. She’s the friend so many of us would have had in grade school and kept for life. She keeps a strong social media presence on Tik Tok and Instagram. You can follow her on Instagram: @sophiediener and on Tiktok: @sophiediener.
You can read more by and about Sophie here and here.
Cento poems feature lines of existing poetry that are put together in new ways to create a whole new poem, a lot like a quilt. Or Frankenstein. Or one of those photography montages where all the photos are put together to look like Abraham Lincoln or something. As I create a Cento from each collection of poetry this month, I’ll add the titles of each poem in line order beneath the poem. If you’ve never written a Cento, you may wish to challenge yourself to try this form this month and see how fun it is to write! Here is a Cento I’ve created from several of the poems in Sophie Diener’s book Someone Somewhere Maybe:
Becoming
Things take time to fall into place
in this precious part of your life.
There are parts of you that fade with time
But oh, how beautiful.
Recognize how far you’ve come.
Lines taken from these poems, in this order: Have Hope; Don’t be a Stranger; Blue; A Heart with Legs; You are Safe.
Common Threads 
I like this form of writing as another way to write a poem. It reminds me of blackout poetry. Happy March!
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Thank you, Melanie! I fell in love with Cento poems years ago and have baskets and baskets of tongue depressors with lines of poetry on one side and the name of the poem/poet on the other. Students love writing Cento and don’t even have to lift a pencil.
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Kim, this is a lovely format that captures so much in just a few words – poetry at its best. You line “parts of you that fade with time,” is a haunting reminder, to me to hold tight to those we love.
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Anita, thank you! Yes, I saw this in my own mother as she faded. It’s a real thing, and it reminds us to keep living as long as we can. Thanks for reading, friend!
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Kim,
First, I love your March emblem. You’ve chosen a clever theme I can’t imagine tackling on a day basis. I’m looking forward to each poem and to seeing the collections I know reimagined as cento poems, which are sure to be more beautiful than Frankenstein! Today’s poem doesn’t feel like a cento at all. It is lovely. I read it three times!
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Thank you, Glenda! I have had fun discovering the living poets and curating lists of which ones to use. I have also had to do some interlibrary loans, and it has revealed to me that so many libraries need to focus on their poetry collections – – as do I. This has been an eye-opening realization as I have scoured bookstores as well for used copies of collections. I go back to your own words: I recycle books, but I keep poetry. You really inspired me to take on living poets this month, and you didn’t even realize how much time I spent pondering my own collection of poetry books. So thank you for a seed that bloomed.
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Oh, wow! Thank you for introducing me to Cento poems. What a clever idea.
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