Tag: writers

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Celebrating Living Poets: A Culminating Cento Featuring A Line from Every Poet This Month ~ May the Circle Be Unbroken

Thank you to all of the organizers and technology friends at Slice of Life who give us this space to blog all during March and weekly throughout the year. So much would be missing without our writing community, and it takes dedication and commitment to continue the work. You are appreciated! A huge thanks to each slicer for teaching me new things all month and sharing in the writing journey. What a gift we have in our fellow writers.

If you ever go to The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, you’ll see a circle in the floor that was cut from the old original Grand Ole Opry when it was at the Ryman Theater down near Broadway and brought to the new Opry when it was built. It looks a lot like a vinyl record album. You can read about its history here. The theme song for years at the Opry, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, is made manifest in that circle where all the greats have stood, reaching into the hearts of their audiences and singing from deep within their souls. All songs, after all, are poems set to music.

You can see the circle in the floor on the stage of The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Click the link at the bottom of this post for the live video with the song!

My friend and fellow writer Barb Edler at Sitting Behind the Eight Ball planted a seed for how to conclude a month of celebrating living poets the day she wrote a spine poem using the titles of the books in my poetry stack from a picture I shared. Then, the seed idea sprouted in a Cento poem from Lauren Camp’s poetry on March 29. It was as if a poet was urging me to think of the center, the truth, the room and to let the vision be as large as creation.

And so today, to conclude The Slice of Life Challenge 2026, let’s gather around the great circular slice and stand together as we invite all of the Living Poets back for a line in the multi-voiced Cento poem that features each poet throughout the month. I have taken one line of each daily poem and combined them into a collective song – to call the spirits of our poetry ancestors, the poets of today, and the future generations of poets to keep writing. What would a world be without poetry, without song, without voice? I envision each poet stepping up to the microphone to say their line, then returning to their place in the circle.

May the Circle Be Unbroken

When the earth makes a particularly hard turn

I can’t sleep at night

Glazed eyes, I go into a poem

perched on the edge of euphoric plummet

Eyes up, Arms out

Lulled by the rhythm of pewter waves

whatever your name is, you are with your own kind

Listen closely and maybe you’ll realize – it isn’t your voice

allow that it’s supposed to be in bloom right now

beneath each human move

beneath this wing

A poem is a gesture toward home

Inside the case were all the photos

we rouse ghosts

wanting in

what’s left is footage: the hours before

My life is filled with the souls of women

There are parts of you that fade with time

women in rustling skirts, old men with walkers

people on the street

They say to stay strong

I am a fortress

Maybe the poem is a cry for help

A star shoots across the sky

A tricky riddle cleverly solved

for the nonbelievers

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

Never forget that

let that vision be as large as creation

That that parade of it all might ignite me

Side note: Denise Krebs also wrote a Cento using a line of each of her Stafford Challenge poems from this month so hop over to Dare to Care to read hers as well. She, Barb Edler, and Glenda Funk are the others in a small group that meets once a month to write together. These ladies are not only writing friends, but also real friends I’ve met in person and who may know me better than those who sit feet from me at work every day. Truth.

Here is the poem as it looked when I used Cento sticks to arrange it, and the order of the sticks from the underside that tell the order of each poet who wrote each line in the photo beneath this one.

Here are the poems and poets from which each line was taken throughout the month, in this order that appears above (but not in date order 1-31):

The Song of the House in the House by Joy Hard

I Worry by Wendy Cope

How Nature Calls Me by Glenis Redmond

Midnight, Talking About our Exes by Ada Limon

Undivided Attention by Kate Baer

Back to School by Amy Nemecek

Goldenrod by Maggie Smith

Whose Hate did You Swallow by Victoria Hutchins

Brazen by Marcela Sunak

Showing Up by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From by Joy Sullivan

Duplex by Jericho Brown

Salvage by Miranda Cowley Heller

Who We Gonna Call by Amanda Gorman

Noche, La Casa Mag de Lena, Lamy, New Mexico by Sandra Cisneros

Providence by Natasha Trethewey

Marriage of Friends by Hannah Rosenberg

Blue by Sophie Diener

Eclogue with Paris and Prayer by Chelsea Rathburn

The Order of the Day by Billy Collins

Stay Strong by David Gate

Virginity by David Elliott

Queries of Unrest by Clint Smith

Before by Brian Rohr

An Address I’ll Forget by Sarah Kay

The Dark Doorway by Lyndsay Rush

First Snow by Arthur Sze

What Not to Say to Your Students at the Juvenile Detention Center by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell

Fear Of by Lauren Camp

Taxi by Misha Collins

Finally, here is a video of the theme song sung during the 100th anniversary celebration. Click the link below the picture and sing along as we bid farewell to the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge and invite it to journey on in our daily lives….and to return in 2027 with more voices in this great circular Slice of Life.

Click Video Link Here: Live Celebration of Will the Circle Be Unbroken

For April, please consider coming to join us for VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com. The party starts tomorrow, and we will be writing a poem daily through the month. If committing to an entire month seems too much right now, perhaps you can come on weekends or a couple of days a week. We’d love to have you join us! As Denise Krebs shared today: I’ll be writing poems each day in April at Ethical ELA’s #Verselove. Maybe you’ll join Kim Johnson, Glenda Funk, Sharon Roy, Margaret Simon, Rita DiCarne, Erica Johnson, Barb Edler, me, and many others. No need to sign up. Just join us here: https://www.ethicalela.com/verselove/

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July Gift Basket for the Bad Ass Book Club

This month, I’m sharing some of Dad’s conversations in his final days, and in one of them that you can hear at the bottom of this post, he revealed a surprising thought about how we feel about folks from time to time. His revelation reminded me of a poem that I wrote recently for a small group of women in one of my writing circles.

My Stafford Challenge group meets the first Monday of each month by Zoom to chat and write together, and we’re a group of women who enjoy reading as much as writing. I’ve been writing a form each month called Gift Basket writing, where I choose three things I’d give a person in a gift basket for that month. This one is dedicated especially to my Stafford Writing Group sisters – Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. At the time I wrote this, I’d recently stumbled across a book club I’d love to join, even for the name alone, and there is actually a summer camp in Maine for its readers – this is a real thing. My dream summer is going to this book club’s summer camp, and I’ve added it to the bucket list.

Bad Bitch Book Club

if I were giving you

a gift basket

I’d make it a

Bad Bitch gift basket

to welcome the storms

of the world~

you’d receive

a t-shirt that says

BAD BITCH BOOK CLUB

complete with

a membership to

the Bad Bitch Book Club

(yes ~ it’s a real thing

with its own dot com)

and a mirror

so you’ll always

see the

baddest of the kick-ass bad

right in the palm of your hand~

knowing your Bad Bitch sisters

have your back!

It’s okay to have a BB attitude sometimes……even my preacher Dad in his final days confessed that there are times we are all a little bit badass. You can listen here:

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Blue Ridge Writer’s Conference – Day 2 – The Art of Revision

Saturday’s sessions

Revising with Scissors Nonet

so much to learn in these writing sessions

we brainstorm, jot ideas, arrange words

we consider other structures

we cut out inked passages

using sharp-tongued scissors

that speak only truth

we reread, smile

revisions

forgive

shears

Jessica Handler led a session on using sensory details in writing to make characters come alive
We shared our favorite techniques using what we’re currently writing as our material for organizing in different ways. Mickey is a master at teaching how to outline!

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted the writer’s conference to last a full week, and I wanted to stay in a lodge with other writers, where we could sit in the common room by the fire in the evenings in sweatpants and scarves and sip wine and share writing. But I keep that vision in my mind, that image of total peace and bliss, and carry it with me back into reality on the heels of this fabulous winter break.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.

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February Open Write Day 5: Characters We’ve Loved

Photo by Dan K Joseph on Pexels.com

Seana Hurd Wright of Los Angeles is our host today for the fifth and final day of the February Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read Seana’s full prompt and the poems of others here. Today, Seana inspires us to write poems about the favorite characters we’ve had over the years.

Christopher Robin for President

I

wore the

shirts growing

up, emblazoned

with Winnie the Pooh

Sears Catalog clothing

of the Hundred Acre Wood

where Christopher Robin’s friends

diverse as they were, got along

and I want to start a shirt movement:

let’s all move to the Hundred Acre Wood

(which doesn’t need to be made great again)

because it never lost its friendship

nor its caring for others, nor

its giving more than it it took

you see, those characters

had embracing hearts

who knew how to

keep focus

on what

lasts

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Tea and Writing With Friends

Unexpected kindnesses can happen anytime, in the most needed ways. A couple of weeks ago, fellow slicer and friend Barb Edler of Iowa reached out to see if I wanted to be part of a small group she was putting together for The Stafford Challenge of daily writers in our second year of writing a poem a day for one full year. Each of us writes in three common writing groups and have met in person to make presentations at NCTE. We keep in touch, and I’ve often thought that my friends in the midwest and west coast and I share deeper connections than friends sitting next to me each day at work – – because we share the bond of kinship through writing. And I’m so thankful for this, because along with Denise Krebs and Glenda Funk, we found we were kindred spirits all seeming to need a lift right about now. Each of us shared a poem via Zoom that we’ve written recently and found a common thread – a numbness, disbelief, sadness about what is happening in our world with its shocking politics, heartbreaking plane crashes, and other woeful wreckage.

There are no words to capture the deep feeling of comfort that comes when you sit with friends, near or far, with a cup of tea and spend time sharing writing. I’m thanking each of you today, because that’s what slicing does, too. It brings us together to share what is foremost on our minds and hearts and keeps us in touch with what is going on in our lives across the globe. I love having my gardening friends, my RV bloggers, my travel buddies, my fellow grandmothers who share amazing ideas, fellow readers and birdwatchers and more. Thank you for being a writer in my life.

I’m sharing my tricube (three stanzas, three lines per stanza, three syllables per line) that I shared last night (below). I’m also making plans for March slicing – – I’ve sectioned out the waking hours of a typical day, and I plan to write a poem for every 31-minute time slot about something happening during that time, just to feel the real-lifeness of each moment, just because there can be deep comfort in things as simple as stirring honey into a cup of hot green tea and accepting that it’s okay not to want to read the tea leaves.

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

I don’t know

I don’t know

what to say

words fail me

I don’t know

what to do

verbs fail me

I don’t know

what to think

thoughts fail me

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Slice of Life and EthicalELA Writing Groups in Boston

Leilya Pitre, Tammi Belko, Ann E. Burg, and me

If you asked me to share the highlight of this year’s NCTE Convention in Boston, I might think for a few moments before landing on an answer, for there is much to consider.

I’d think about the keynote speakers, and how I had the fabulous opportunity to hear Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson share her story and offer signed books so that attendees can all read more about her journey. I stood in that book line for well over one hour, chatting with a writing friend, happy to have the right to read and the freedom to choose it. I did not complain, either, like I do in Wal Mart when there is a long line.

I’d think of Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live and Weird Barbie and Ms. Frizzle voice fame and also getting a copy of her new signed book.

With Kate McKinnon and a signed copy of her new book

I’d think of the trade book author signings – meeting them, sharing a photo op, and wondering about all the unique ways they sign. I’d think of the sessions – trying to pick just one each time – and the poster and mini sessions offering shorter chunks of learning time.

With Linda Rief, the queen of the Quickwrite, who attended our session where I was leading a quickwrite as part of a poetry process – and stayed at my roundtable for a double round! Love this author!

I’d think of the iconic green couch and the surrounding cityscapes with the vast array of restaurants and historic landmarks.

I’d think of the quiet moments of reading and writing, and I’d think of the wide webs of networking and meeting new friends.

I’d think of the excitement of sharing the five books my writing group has written over the past year, and the way it feels like we are walking on a cloud every single time we get to open the pages of them and share them with others – and presenting on two of them at this NCTE Convention. I hope that the two that will be published by Routledge Press in 2025 will bring us back to NCTE next year in Denver to present on those titles as well.

Enjoy a complimentary download of the books above with this QR code!

I’d think, too, of the Boston Writing Marathon Workshop that was being held at the same time as my presentation and how Richard Louth, the founder of the writing marathon and leader of the workshop, ran for his handout (I felt like I might cry) because I was hungry for the experience and needed to know more – and how I’d emailed him and he’d responded, inviting me to join in and share my writing. He’d even suggested a peaceful place to go and write – at Boston’s “Grub Street,” a bookstore/coffee shop/ cafe with a top floor for writers at work. I’ll feature my visit to that shop in tomorrow’s blog.

Sy Montgomery and Matt Patterson signed my book, “To Our #1 Fan, Kim!” I got there early to be first in line. I’ve been a fan of Sy’s for many years, and love that she is here in Boston, right where she did all of her research at the New England Aquarium and made me cry with grief over Octavia in The Soul of an Octopus.

The highlights would be hard to determine, but I wouldn’t have to think long before responding that the most heartfelt highlights of NCTE are found in the connections – – the sharing of stories, dreams, and ideas. Breathing the same air as 7,800 other educators who are all passionate about their careers and their love of reading and writing is empowering. Planning a session with a virtual poetry writing group, then presenting together and meeting for dinner is energizing. Having dinner a second night with yet another writing group (my blogging friends from Slice of Life) is the icing on the cake. To meet those face to face with whom you’ve read and written over the years is a gift – one that continually reminds us that the simple act of finding the beauty in an ordinary moment and sharing it in writing so that we can all be present across the miles – and then holding togetherness in person – is as humanly highlighting as it gets.

The Slice of Life writing group met at Serafina in Boston Seaport
With fellow Georgia educator and children’s book author Randi Sonenshine, who turned up at the front of the line early, too, to meet Sy Montgomery because Sy inspired her children’s picture book The Den That Octopus Built. It was great to see her again!
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Slice of Life Challenge – March 1 :The Slicer Meet-Up

When I was in California last November for the NCTE Convention, I programmed my phone’s navigation to take me to McCormick and Schmick’s at the Anaheim Garden Walk for the Slice of Life Meet-Up at 5:00. I couldn’t wait to meet everyone, to put faces with the names of the bloggers whose posts I read every Tuesday throughout the year and everyday during the month of March for the Slice of Life Writing Challenge. We were each bringing a gift for a writer for a gift exchange, but I knew that the best gift of all would be the personal connections I would make with my fellow writers.

I planned to arrive right on time so that I could be back at the Anaheim Hilton at 6:30 for the Open Write Meet-up in the MIX Restaurant for dinner with my group giving a presentation at the conference. Even though I was still in a boot as my broken right ankle healed, I figured this walk would be quick and easy.

I was wrong.

I’m not sure why, but whenever I’m walking in a major city along with hundreds of thousands of other people, I imagine that everyone is going to the same place I’m going – or at least that they know where everywhere is and can help me if I get lost. At the first intersection, my arrow was still wonky, changing directions like a compass that couldn’t locate magnetic north, so I took a chance and stayed in the stream with the masses.

I started scanning the throng of people for anyone who looked like a writer who might be headed to the table for the dozen or so of us who would be attending, and my eyes fell on two women about my age who appeared to have had the characteristic writer’s callus on the last knuckle of their middle fingers. I was convinced I’d successfully used my detective skills and found them.

At the next traffic light, I eased my way closer to them so that I could tag along and listen for a moment. They’d stopped talking, so I made a bold move and decided to ask.

“Are you going to the Slicer meet-up?”

No sooner had I gotten the words out of my mouth, I realized I had asked the wrong people the right question the wrong way, given the state of our world.

I found myself looking into two completely horrified faces. Horrified.

The walking light turned white, and they turned and took off in another direction, looking back over their shoulders at me as if I’d been sporting a knife in my boot. Me. A murderous slicer. I was glad I had saved a chain of emails in case the cops came and I had been taken in for questioning.

Next time, I’ll know to inconspicuously whisper, “Would you happen to be headed to the Slice of Life invitational dinner for celebrity writers?”

I walked on another block, and then I saw a familiar female face standing at a traffic light, waiting to cross. At least I was pretty sure it was her. I decided on a safer tactic.

“Fran?”

“Yes,” she replied, looking at me curiously.

“I’m Kim. I recognize your picture from your blog. Are you going to the meet-up?”

We walked the rest of the way together, and we managed to find our fellow writers.

A huge thank you to Two Writing Teachers for providing the Slice of Life Writing Challenge now and throughout the year, and to Melanie Meehan for arranging such a lovely gathering, full of fun, laughter, writers’ gifts, and stories! I’m hoping that we will be able to enjoy time together again at this year’s NCTE Convention. I’ll plan to Uber and would love to share a ride with you to the Citrus Society Celebrity Writer’s Red Carpet Invitational Gala!

2022 Slicer Meet-Up in Anaheim, California
A street somewhere in Anaheim where I got lost and somehow avoided being arrested.
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Literature: What are Your Writing Habits?

A springtime stay at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina convinced me that I needed a writer’s desk like F. Scott Fitzgerald had. I’d slept right across the hall from the two rooms he’d regularly occupied there, positioned strategically over the front doors so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings of folks. Downstairs, where his desk is on display, I’d taken pictures from every angle.

Oh, to have a writer’s desk like that, I thought, admiring the heaviness of the oak and its ample surface space.

I priced desks online. I looked in stores. I came home and made a makeshift writer’s desk from an antique dresser in our guest room, even buying a comfortable chair for my newly-crowned space until I found just the right big oak desk.

Every morning at my same pre-civilization hour, though, I returned to my favorite living room chair and perched up with my lap desk and Chromebook to write. I still do, 8 months after falling in love with Fitzgerald’s desk. I used the makeshift desk only once, and it was not my wave to ride. So instead, I ordered a bigger lap desk with more surface space – and after that fine-tuning step, my chair is my spot!

All this got me thinking: what were the habits of writing among the classical writers? Where do my contemporary writing friends and authors I follow write today? Learning about the writing habits of others is fascinating. I’ve included some links below for exploring. Happy writing!

https://writetodone.com/learn-from-the-greats-7-writing-habits-of-amazing-writers/

https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2015/peculiar-habits-7-writers

https://writetodone.com/20-weird-and-wonderful-habits-of-famous-writers/

The Daily Routines of 12 Famous Writers
The Fascinating Work Habits of 18 Famous Writers (Infographic)