Tag: local poets

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How to Plan a National Poetry Month Event in Your Town and Throughout All The Land- Stafford Challenge Day 65, Slice of Life Challenge Day 21

Special Thanks to Two Writing Teachers

Last year, Denise Krebs asked me to share what I had done to plan a National Poetry Month celebration in my rural Georgia town. Today, I’m sharing a list prose poem (I think I just totally made that combo form up) of How To Plan A Poetry Event In Your Town. I’m currently, still, and always in the planning stages, so these are some of the things I’ve done to plan this year’s event (and last year’s too). At the end of April, I’ll share a picture tour of these events that began in February this year (we couldn’t wait…). Stay tuned.

Painted canvas in the palette of awakenings poetry – ready for lettering!
21 Steps to a Town Poetry Celebration: A List  Prose Poem 

1.  Ask the local Arts Council to pick a theme that fits your town. Imagine the infinite possibilities when they pick Awakenings after two years of the same theme of Bloom. 
2.  Say a prayer of thanks that your community works together to make poetry happen and has given you the title The Crazy Poetry Lady. (Move over, Crazy Cat Ladies!)
3.  Ask a friend to write a poem on the theme (the one who writes a book instead).
4.  When he writes the book, set him up with a poetry reading and book signing event.
5.  Ask another local poet to read and sign his new book, too, in the coffee shop. 
6.  Think back to Fran Haley's post on The Poetry Fox and invite him to town with his Fox suit and his vintage typewriter to bang out poems in under 70 seconds when folks throughout the land give him a word and then watch them be amazed when he stamps it with his little fox paw print, suitable at once for framing. 
7. When he agrees to come from North Carolina, create canvases for the Chamber of Commerce windows of all the poets' verses. Paint the backdrops in shades of sunrise awakenings. Pretend you are a New York City window dresser and borrow easels and  buy fishing line and eye hooks to hang the artwork, then stand back and wonder if any Crazy Cat Ladies will loan you some poetry cats
to curl up in the window display. 
8.  Set up a Progressive Poetry Walk around the town square (read it in sections on stands). Since people will come throughout the land to see the fox, they’ll need something to read while they wait in the long line. 
9.  Make YouTube shorts of directions on how to write poetry for those who think they can't.
10.  Set up community poetry writing kiosks with QR codes to scan for directions and create a community Padlet to showcase the writing online. 
11.  Ask the Georgia Poet Laureate to come read her poems in the coffee shop, too. Jump out of your skin with excitement when she sends you two poems that will appear in her new book and allows you to put them on a canvas in the Chamber window. 
12.  Plan an Open Mic night so those throughout the land can come listen....read.....recite. Note that 2 other community partners planned them without your prompting this year….and smile that your seeds are blooming. Pray your garden will grow and grow theoughout the land. 
13.  Bask in the glow of what poetry does in a town and a state and a nation and a heart. 
14.  Invite all your writing group friends to  come to 1828 Coffee Company on April 25 at 6:00 to read their poems and drink the best coffee in all the land with you. Because Glenda Funk keeps a suitcase packed and ready, you know. 
15.  If they can't be here in person, invite them instead to record themselves reading a favorite poem or one they've written and send it to you or upload it to YouTube so you can make a QR code and put it in frames all around your town and throughout the land. 
16.  Create canvases of their verses to go in the Chamber windows, too, on your theme: awakenings. 
17.  Wonder why you haven't created a collection and put it out on Amazon.  
18.  Start a Word document of all the poems you'd put in a poetry collection on your theme.
19.  Decide to self publish a short collection and choose a title and create an action plan. 
20.  Bask in the joy of poetry and all the healing it brings to a heart and a town and a state and a nation and a world and a universe.
21.  Don't wonder where you'd be without the gift of poetry.  You don't even want to know.

and then wonder if you can rewrite 21 into a poem all its own…..try a Haiku….

you don’t want to know
where you’d be without the gifts
of life-changing verse

its healing magic
reaches in, awakens souls 
throughout all the land 

…
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A Sunday Well-Spent and a Poetry Invitation – Slice of Life Challenge Day 12, Stafford Challenge Day 56

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers!

Sunday was a day well-spent! We watched my dad preach in my childhood church via YouTube, and I texted my brother and his fiancee to check on them as they travel to New Orleans for the week. We had breakfast with our schnoodles by the fire, and then I painted 18 canvases to dress the Chamber of Commerce windows for National Poetry Month. Finally, we had a wonderful Zoom gathering arranged by Lainie Levin to meet other slicers face to face and enjoy conversation.

Part of my role in my school system is to oversee the L4GA Literacy grant, which offers funding for literacy events in the community. National Poetry Month is a fabulous time to plan some Open Mic nights, author poetry readings, and writing workshops. Last year, we created a progressive poetry walk around our town square, featuring a local poet’s poem he’d written about our rural town to the theme of Bloom!

For this year’s theme, Awakenings (our local Arts Council chose this year’s theme), we’re switching from a progressive poetry walk to a window dressing, thanks to our sensational Chamber of Commerce team, who has agreed to allow us to decorate the windows as a town square feature this year. These canvases will have poetry written on them in black letters.

If you are looking for a slice topic sometime this week and enjoy writing poetry, I would love to have some short poems (4-6 lines) on the theme of Awakenings. I’m curating a collection of poems on this theme by living poets to feature in our window. Some will be local poets who share readings in our coffee shop, while others will be from right here in the Slice of Life or another writing group….maybe you! I’ll change them out from week to week, so if yours is featured, I’ll share a photo of your poem on display sometime at the end of May on a Tuesday slicing day. You can add your poem in the comments on any day of my blog throughout March.

I’m sharing our palette color scheme below. 

Poetry Invitation Elfchen 

painting
bright canvases
National Poetry Month
local business window dressings
~ awakenings ~
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Awakenings Elfchen – The Stafford Challenge Day 46, Slice of Life Challenge Day 2

February Poetry Night at the Coffee Shop

We had a local poet come to our town square coffee shop to talk about his collection of poetry in his book Dust. Ethan Jacobs, a graduate of our high schools and Auburn University, shared his inspirations and writing processes, and he held an audience spellbound for a half hour with his poetry. What a gift! Ethan majored in Education but chose to follow his passion of woodworking as his career path. We are so proud of Ethan.

I’m especially proud of him because one year prior to his reading, I sat in this very room with him to record several YouTube shorts of him reading his poems when his book was still a dream coming together. It was a glorious moment to see him holding his published book in his hands as he shared with his audience of 16 people ranging in age from teenagers to attendees in their 80s. I’m sharing a couple of those clips at the end of today’s post (we made QR codes of the videos and placed them in small frames around our county so that people in restaurants or places of business could scan them and discover a poem; and a few were even hidden in plastic Easter eggs!).

We’ve decided on our town theme for National Poetry Month this year.

Awakenings.

It goes with our coffee shop, the hub of our sharing, and the rural spring buds and blooms and greening of the world waking from winter.

And, perhaps, it calls to the inner poet.

Ethan reads from his book Dust

We gave attendees a time to write at the end of the evening. Here is my elfchen:

Awakening

awakening
sunshine streams
coffee brews ~ I
leap into life......caffeinated,
ready