My writing groups converge today – Slice of Life Challenge writers and Open Write writers take joy on days when we get to see all of our fellow writers on the same day when the stars align. I’m so grateful for these groups of writers who are positive people, inspiring others to write. I also joined The Stafford Challenge in January, and we are around Day 160 of writing a poem every day for one entire year – so we’re close to the middle mark. Where would I be without my writing family? I don’t want to know.
Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host for Day 4 of the June Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She inspires us today to write reflection/projection poems, using synonyms for those words by looking forward and looking back. You can read her full prompt here. Today I have a working retreat before going off contract for three weeks over the summer, so I’ll be doing a lot of this today. I wrote a nonet, a nine-line poem with line-numbered syllables on each line in descending order.
Slice of Life writers are bloggers who share our posts and something about the moments of our lives. We write every day during March and all through the year on Tuesdays. You can find the home page at www.twowritingteachers.org to learn more. Today’s Slicing prompt is thinking about what inspires us to write on the early days of summer. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m almost there…….
If you’ve never rolled a set of Taylor Mali’s Metaphor Dice, take note: they’re one of the best ways to make poetry accessible for reluctant writers. The red dice are nouns (conceptual, most), white are adjectives, and blue are nouns that represent the direct comparison to the red dice. I rolled the dice:
Naysay Nonet
the truth is a back-handed mirror because once you say to someone to prove your argument's point that they should have called you you can't turn around and not have called them when you should have called
The world thinks they were abandoned by their guide boat in shark-infested waters, but the truth is that another boat came for the honeymooners, swept them away to a new better life
Today’s poem is a nonet, a nine-line poem in ascending or descending order with syllable numbers representing each ordered line. My son’s recent hunting experience inspired this poem.
Actual photo of the bad boys. #camouflagedgoodboys
Bad Boys
two lifelong friends got warning tickets from the game warden, duck hunting without the proper life vests then....held up their tickets smiled while their buddy snapped a photo to send their moms. THEY BAD!
driveway gravel crackles under tires resident deer appears in mists hawks hunt meadows for field mice playful will-o'-the-wisps gather 'round at night you can see them ~ ancestors long gone ~ here
Fran Haley of North Carolina and I are hosting this week’s writing prompts at http://www.ethicalela.com for the November Open Write. You can read today’s prompt below or here on the website. We’d love to have you join us as we write and share!
Give Me This – an Ada Limon-inspired Poem
Our Host
Kim Johnson, Ed.D., lives on a farm in Williamson, Georgia, where she serves as District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools. She enjoys writing, reading, traveling, camping, sipping coffee from souvenir mugs, and spending time with her husband and three rescue schnoodles with literary names – Boo Radley (TKAM), Fitz (F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (Mary Oliver). You can follow her blog, Common Threads: Patchwork Prose and Verse, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com.
Inspiration
As part of Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind book club, Fran Haley and I will be facilitating a discussion of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon in April to celebrate National Poetry Month. Preparing for these conversations led us to choose several of Limon’s poems this week as inspirations for topic, form, or title. In Give Me This, Limon watches a groundhog steal her tomatoes and envies the freedom of this creature in the delights of rebellion.
Process
Use Limon’s poem as a theme or topic, form, or title (or combination of these) to inspire your own Give Me This poem.
Kim’s Poem
I’m using a moment I would love to re-live, a moment I did not want to pull away from, as my inspiration for today’s poem, and I’m choosing the Nonet form, in which each numbered line from 1-9, or from 9-1 has that many syllables on each. I’m writing a nonet and a reverse nonet to form a concrete (shape) poem resembling a prairie dog’s hideout.
Today’s host for the final day of our September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Glenda Funk of Idaho, who inspires us to write Barbie poems. You can read Glenda’s full prompt and her poem here. I can’t wait to see all of the poems born into the world on this topic, so please hop over to the site and take a read. I chose a reverse nonet today, crafting nine lines with each numbered line’s syllable count on each in descending order as if going back in time, seeking Fountain of Youth Barbie.
Turning Back the Years Reverse Nonet
We’d line them up like kickball players
at recess, then pick one by one,
taking turns to get the best
looking Barbies. Next, we’d
choose accessories ~
whip worlds to life
narrating
stories
dreamed.
As part of this post today, I’m sharing the remaining poems from the poetry marathon last Friday, where a poem and hour was written either by someone in my family, a friend, or me. Here they are:
12 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Hashtag Haiku
#meanness
Fruit of the Spirit
my tree needs fertilizer
nothing much blooming…..
1 a.m. hour – Tanka – a five line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7
Cinnamon apples
sliced, wax-sealed in Mason jars
cane sugar syrup
for Thanksgiving dessert pies
prepped-ahead ingredients!
2 a.m. hour – Naani – a poem consisting of four lines, with twenty to twenty-five syllables on any topic
Pumpkin Harvest!
Pumpkin Spice!
Pumpkin jack-o-lanterns ~
glowing face with the slice of a knife!
3 a.m. hour – Senryu – a three line unrhymed poem similar to Haiku, about nature
Midland water snake
basking in Gibbs Gardens grass
misunderstood
4 a.m. hour – Tricubes – three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables per line
Poetry
Wings to Fly
Words to heal
Poetry
Weatherproof
Warmth for cold
Poetry
What if prompts
Why not now?
5 a.m hour – Cinquain – a poem that has two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two in the fifth (it was early, and I was watching my Honey Nut Cheerios dance in my plain Greek yogurt)…..
mOrning
cOffee hOp!
cheeriO’ed yOgurt prOm
O’s d-Osi-dO with pOetry
hOedOwn!
6 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Ode – a poem of praise, often written directly to a person or object
Memories of Miriam
Dear Mom, you come to me in the missing with tingly spots that turn warm in the heart, help me exhale~ my fingers circling my temples bringing back all the whens
of this Bernina your fingers guiding mine under the foot, stitch by stitch learning to sew a lime green terrycloth bathcover, now sewing quilts for your great grands on your fine Swiss machine
of hawks, talons clutching wires checking that my seatbelt is fastened as I drive past, shaking your pointing finger if I forgot, knowing that whatever I’m thinking at that moment, you’re there in it
of strawberry figs, last summer wave just picked, my own weakening fingers twisting tender fruits free ~ canned this very week, Mason jars sealed tight with summer’s sweetened warmth for coming winter
of spiced Russian tea, the Tangy orange and lemonade mixed with clove, sugar cinnamon and tea ~ a medicinal brush of your invisible fingers through my hair in sore throat season
of rippled milkglass with resurrection fern springing to life unfurling its brown dry fingers into open arms
The host for September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com today is Barb Edler of Iowa. She inspires us to write poems about favorite childhood books or poems. You can read her full prompt here. I chose to write about my favorite childhood book – Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes.
By The Light of the Moon
back in the 70s, the
World Book Encyclopedia
and Childcraft salesmen came
door to door
selling sets
ecru-colored hardbacks
gold-embossed lettering
the only one that
mattered to me
had a pink-banded
spine ~ Volume 1
Poems and Rhymes
that I read so much
I’m surprised I didn’t
read the ink clean off
the pages
I had a closet-and-flashlight
fixation with Volume 1
I’d crawl in and read for hours
staring at the illustrations,
memorizing the words
Overheard on a Salt Marsh
my favorite of all time
but Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee
and The Purple Cow
and The Raggedy Man
and every.other.page
were my best friends
so much that today,
I have a framed copy
of Harold Monro’s
masterpiece
by my bed, draped
with green glass beads
to remind me
I was steeped
in reading
by the light
of
the
moon
Last Friday, I had a poetry writing marathon, where I invited family and some friends to write poems that I would feature on the blog this week. Each hour, a new poem was born. I began sharing these on Saturday, and today is Day 3 of 5 days of our shared poems, continued below.
6 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – List poem – – a poem that contains a list or inventory of things, people, places, or ideas
Signs Seen on a Drive Between Counties in Rural Georgia
Do not be lukewarm
Be the light!
Slower traffic keep right
Speed checked by detection devices
The compassion of the Lord never fails
Sad to see summer go. NOT.
Where will you spend eternity?
Don’t be the dealer…..be the difference!
Wrong Way
Don’t scroll. Stay in control.
Everything is hotter in the south!
Fall: When God displays his finest artistry.
7 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Etheree – A ten line poem in which each numbered line contains that number of syllables, written in ascending or descending order.
Norris’s Fine Foods
catfish, hush puppies, coleslaw and crawfish
green beans, cabbage, and corn on the cob
fried shrimp, baked cod, barbecue beans
shrimp scampi, rice and cornbread
peach and apple cobblers
Norris’s Fine Foods
chocolate cake
banana
pudding
…..full!
8 p.m. hour – my grandson Aidan – Concrete Poem – a poem in the shape of an object of the poem, or where the arrangement of words looks like the poem’s subject. These are also called shape poems.
My grandson writes about a covered bridge by the bridge
9 p.m. hour – Ken Haynes and Jennifer Butler – Renga Poem – a poem in which the first poet writes the first three lines in seventeen syllables, then the second poet writes two lines containing seven syllables.
Gracie and JoJo are mine
Kasa is his
We are one family
loving our dogs
please love yours!
10 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Nonet – poem with nine lines, with each numbered line containing that many syllables and can be written in ascending or descending order
I was riding along Route 66 through Texas on vacation in June when the text came from my friend Melanie, who teaches in our Humanities pathway in our Ninth Grade Academy:
Actual text. I accidentally hit SEND too soon and had to finish in an unplanned bubble.
Those are the kinds of texts I love the most – when teachers invite me into classrooms to write alongside students. I met with Melanie when I returned, and we designed a plan. Our day was originally scheduled for yesterday, but we had to reschedule for today. We will write 9/11 Jenga block poems, and I will model a Nonet form to show how a poet might use visual shape to symbolize rebuilding and strengthening when all hope seemed lost.
A nonet is a poem with nine lines, containing each numbered line’s number of syllables on its line. It can be written in ascending or descending order – or both, and could even be read bottom to top if a poet decided to write it that way.
I got the idea for this form from Paul Hankins, who glues colorful letters of all different fonts onto different shapes of wooden blocks. He calls it Blockhead poetry when his students take the letters and arrange them into words, then put the words into poems.
I took the quicker way out and began purchasing sets of Jenga blocks and using whole words from magazines to put onto the blocks, and I’ve created sets on various themes such as Bloom! (gardening and growth words for National Poetry Month), poverty and genocide (two of our Humanities themes), and rural Georgia living, with words like pickup truck and dirt road. For today, I’ve created a set of 200 blocks to be used for 9/11 poetry. I’ve used them in all grades from Pre-K through 12, and with adults. Sometimes, we let a group of words inspire poems that take different forms. Sometimes, the words stand alone on lines as poems of their own. One time, we challenged ourselves to write Haiku with blocks alone and no added words.
I drafted a poem yesterday to show how students might select blocks as inspiration words. Here is my draft:
I spoke with Melanie yesterday. She was concerned that she hadn’t spent enough time building background knowledge on 9/11 to prepare for this writing but didn’t want to leave the task in the hands of a sub for such a sensitive topic. I think she made the right choice. I’m thinking that this may even have been a better approach – – because students will have seen the remembrance tributes yesterday and engaged in conversations with others. Perhaps in our initial disappointment that we’d had to reschedule the writing day, this blessing of time may have allowed students to gain greater awareness of the events in ways that laid a more meaningful foundation for us to begin.
I can’t wait to see what the students write, but more importantly, I can’t wait to write alongside them and watch their wheels turn as they make their block word choices. There’s something magical about writing, even in the midst of a topic of despair and pain.
Today’s host for the last day of the July Open Write is Mike Dombrowski of Michigan. You can read his full prompt here, along with the poems and responses of others. Today, Mike inspires us to write a poem about a time we experienced anxiety, and to include how we overcame it if possible. I chose to write about my mother’s last breath.
Common Threads 