Tag: VerseLove2025

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#VerseLove Day 6 with Stacey Joy of California – Where I’m From, Again!

Stacey Joy, our host for Day 6 of #VerseLove 2025, is a National Board Certified Teacher, Google Certified Educator, and 2013 L.A. County Teacher of the Year. Stacey has taught elementary school for 39 years in Los Angeles Unified School District.

Today, Stacey invites us to write Where I’m From poems. She offers this process: “Visit George Ella Lyon’s website for a refresher on Where I’m From. If you are a list person, create a list of people/places/things/memories. Then compose your poem in any way you prefer. If you are more comfortable with a form, you can write your poem following a form you prefer.” You can read her full prompt here.

Today, I’m writing a Where I’m Not From poem.

I’m not from here.

I’m not from this chaos.

I won’t play these games.

I won’t clean up the mess.

I won’t sit at the table.

I won’t partake of the feast.

I won’t bow for a fake prayer (I know the difference)~

I won’t smile and pretend.

I won’t take the bait.

I’m not from this chaos.

I’m not from here.

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VerseLove Day 5 with Bryan Ripley Crandall of Connecticut – Scars

Bryan Ripley Crandall, our host for Day 5 of VerseLove 2025 at http://www.ethicalela.com, lives in Stratford, Connecticut, where he directs the Connecticut Writing Project and is Professor of English Education at Fairfield University.

Bryan offers these directions: “Write about a scar, one that may be physical in nature or one that might be more  emotional.” You can read his full prompt here.

I chose a Pantoum form for this poem and made the decision to keep a staccato rhythm, as if touching a hot stove and getting burned.

Heart Scar Pantoum

my heart is scarred

it opened

it believed

it got stomped

it opened

it trusted

it got stomped

it realized

it trusted

it committed

it realized

it learned

it committed

it believed

it learned

my heart is scarred

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#VerseLove Day 1 with Jennifer Jowett of Michigan: The Verse Collector

During the month of April, I’m participating in #VerseLove 2025 at http://www.ethicalela.com. Each day, a different host will lead us in a fresh prompt to inspire writing. These prompts can be used in classrooms or for personal writing development. It is my hope that you will visit the site and consider writing and sharing your own poems as we celebrate National Poetry Month together.

Today’s host is Jennifer Jowett of Michigan, who leads us in The Verse Collector prompt. You can read her full prompt inspiring us to write Cento poems here.

For my poem today, I looked no further than my old Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes, the book that started my love of poetry as an elementary school child. I sat in a dark closet with a flashlight for hours on end, mesmerized by the reading. Here are some rearranged lines from that volume of poems that I used to create a new poem.

Stolen Childcrafted Secrets

I was going to the window

(to steal the secret of the sun)

too burning and too quick to hold

but something surely to behold

the swallows blow along the sky

the sparrows twitter as they fly

the wind is passing through

I was going to the window

(to steal the secret of the sun)

(hush, I stole them out of the moon!)

I have so much to tell!

Here are the poems from which I took the lines, in order:

Once I Saw a Little Bird, anonymous

This is My Rock – David McCord

The Falling Star – Sara Teasdale

Song of the Wake-Up-World – Countee Cullen

April – Sara Teasdale

Wind Capers – Nancy Byrd Turner

Who Has Seen the Wind? – Christina Rossetti

Repeat 1

Repeat 2

Overheard on a Salt Marsh – Harold Monro (the poem that put a spell on me for life)

March – Emily Dickinson

My original book had a pink spine and a whole different set of illustrations. This one features the same poems, but is from a different year of this set of books. One day I hope to recover the original book from an attic somewhere……..