My hero of Golden Shovel writing is Stacey Joy of Los Angeles, California. She’s an LA Teacher of the Year, and I’m proud to call her a writing circle friend. Stacey is a true inspiration, and we write together three days a month as part of the Ethicalela Open Write hosted by Sarah Donovan. To write a Golden Shovel, take a sentence, phrase, or even a book title and write it vertically. These can be the words that start each line or that finish each line. And if you really want a brain workout, try a double or triple shovel by writing three sets of words vertically and spreading them out to try to make them fit.
I’m not ambitious enough to try a double or triple shovel today, but here is a Golden Shovel using the lines of my current book title my book club will read in January, Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, as the starting lines in a poem. As part of the Stafford Challenge with Brian Rohr this year, I’m writing a poem every day using different forms.
Vertigo
Not just dizziness and spinning, but
Quite a bit more ~ nausea, stumbling
Dead to the world today
Yet twice as alive tomorrow
Click Here to go to a video on writing a Golden Shovel poem.
I worked with two Humanities teachers in our school district to acquaint students in our 9th Grade Academy with way that they can create poetry from prose. Here is one form of writing we used to mark the geography of a place from our writing. I was using my blog post from Tuesday to model how to let prose inspire poetry.
Golden Shovel Poems
A Golden Shovel poem takes a sentence or phrase from prose (or another poem) and writes it vertically, placing those words at the beginning or end of each line. Ask me about double, triple, quadruple and quintuple shovels…..
When my friend and fellow writer Margaret Simon of New Iberia, Louisiana invited me to the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Festival in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in April to present a poetry writing workshop with her, I eagerly accepted the invitation and began planning the trip. Since it was during my spring break, it made taking the time away much less challenging. Even though I wasn’t able to stay for the entire festival, I enjoyed some time with Margaret – especially our time together in our VRBO as we wrote together and shared the experience as tea drinkers. (You’ll see how Emily Dickinson joined us in a photo at the bottom of this post).
During the month of April, we were both writing daily for #VerseLove2025, so we used the day’s prompt by Joanne Emery, also a writer with Slice of Life, to create poems inspired by looking closely at things around us – particularly things in nature. You can read Joanne’s poem below, used here with her permission.
No Longer
Every year, for twenty years we came here, to this house – two-story brick sitting stately on a hill surrounded by elms and maples, slate blue doors and shutters. We came to love this house because we loved the two people inside and loved them more as they aged – Silver-haired and stooping but always moving, always answering the door with open arms, and open hearts in every season: Magnolias bloomed fragrant in summer. In fall, elms showered yellow leaves onto the rooftop. A dusting of snow frosted the windows in winter. The pear trees’ white blossoms were the first sign of spring. The seasons rolled one onto another so imperceptibly we didn’t even notice. Gradually, the stairs became harder to climb. the television was harder to hear, vials of medicine lined the kitchen counter, important phone numbers were listed on the frig. Now, when we came, the house sat a little lower. We watched a little more closely. stayed a little longer. listened a little better, opened our arms and hearts just a little wider to keep the memories and the two inside close. But the seasons rolled on and the two are now gone and the house we loved Still sits on the hill but we can no longer return..
-Joanne Emery
Margaret’s poem:
(Margaret took a striking line from Joy Harjo’s poem to write a Golden Shovel poem about her friend’s butterfly garden).
Mary’s Invitation
In her garden, there’s salvia, swamp milkweed, that purple one I forgot the name of: you watch a swallowtail circle tall parsley flowers, back around to orange pincushion pistils on a coneflower for a taste of home.
-Margaret Simon
My poem:
Hello from Heaven
two days ago passing through Greenville, Alabama I noticed a mural~ Alabama’s Camellia City fuchsia petals and yellow anthers adorning the corners and thought of my mother, who loved them yesterday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi I drove past a camellia bush of these exact colors and thought again of my mother, who loved them
this gentle wave from Heaven to remind me of her sent me on a quest to discover more about the Japan rose which symbolizes advancing women’s rights and is used to make tea and food seasoning and to protect the blades of sharp cutting instruments ~
interesting, but where is the message from Heaven?
my brother will be at The Masters, where the 10th Hole is The Camellia Hole so I will tell him to look for a sign from our mother there and perhaps, just perhaps he’ll see a Freedom Bell or Cornish Show, Inspiration, Royalty, or a Spring Festival
maybe my own message is here, now, ~ in To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem destroys Mrs. Dubose’s garden when she insults his family but is later given a bud from the dying woman who struggled to overcome her morphine addiction and perhaps, just perhaps this camellia wave is every assurance that forgiveness of others is the work my heart needs to do
and perhaps, just perhaps I’ll plant a camellia this spring to welcome more hellos from Heaven from my mother, who loved them
I glance up at the coffee table in the VRBO where I’m staying and notice a decorative box I hadn’t noticed before now gold-outlined camellias as if my mother has been sitting with me as I write this poem and perhaps, just perhaps she has
– Kim Johnson
We listened to The Sound of Music, which Margaret and her mother often listened to together.
The tea I brought as a gift for Margaret (I have a canister I enjoy as well) is Poet Tea, inspired by the herbs and flowers of the New England farms where Dickinson lived and wrote her poetry. The steam of this tea seems to conjure her presence.
Logo of an actual writing game changer – squeeze it and watch the magic happen as habits take root!
Cheers for the journey through the Slice of Life Challenge throughout March! Here’s the link if you’d like to read the daily blog posts of writers in this challenge.
I celebrate 3 years of daily blogging today all because the Slice of Life Challenge pushed me along in my thinking that if I could write for a week, I could write for two weeks. If I could write for a month, I could write for two months (I joined #VerseLove on the heels of SOLC). If I could write for two months, I could write every day of my life, as I now do with The Stafford Challenge. And so it began….and continues. Thank you to the Two Writing Teachers for the inspiration to make writing a part of my life every single day and for giving writers voice and space. If I can do this, we can all do this. Writers are born from mindset.
This year’s National Poetry Month (April) poster will feature a line from Lucille Clifton’s poem Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary’s) from her book Quilting: Poems 1987-1990. Today, I’m writing a Golden Shovel poem using the striking line: and may you in your innocence sail through this to that. The striking line appears vertically as ending words on each line.
if only these walls hadn't crumbled and we hadn't pretended, we may have made her proud ~ but you in your striped robe of pious innocence paint fake facades, sail in synthetic superlatives through frilly frippery, oblivious to this truth: she would not have wanted you to carry on like that
Anna Roseboro is our host at http://www.ethicalela.com today for Day 12 of #VerseLove, inspiring us to find our birth poets. I loved her nod to a line from Gorman in her own poem today – we must be the light. And I’m rather convinced that’s the only way to change the world. I found Angela Williams, who wrote the poem Almost Savages – born in northern Michigan – and born on the same day and same year as I. I chose to write a Golden Shovel with this striking line: small fish will scatter away from my steps.
Anna Shines the Light
Here’s to you, Anna Small Roseboro! Words glimmer like tiny fish in your sunlight as each of us will put pen to paper, fingers to keys, scatter in all directions far and away searching, learning, writing from the heart of our birth poets- my same-day-and-year poet and I shared first steps
Today’s host for Day 10 of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Brittany Saulnier, who inspires us to write whimsical science poems. I chose to focus on outdoor science – nature and all its discovery and wonder about the world! I have just gotten my flower presses out of the old barn over the weekend and can’t wait to gather flowers and greenery to press on a long walk one afternoon this week. So much of science is soothing, just pure medicine for the soul. Brittany’s gift of a prompt that invites peace is particularly appreciated on this Monday back to work after spring break. Today, my poem is a first-word-Golden Shovel Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) string. I took my striking line as a quote from a birding journal by Vanessa Sorensen: “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bloom!
adopt a mindset~
the practice of noticing
pace your amazement
of observing more fully
nature: less is so much more
her covert moments
secret discoveries ~ what
is our big hurry?
its blessings beckoning us
patience blooms on every stem
Common Threads 