National Poetry Month!
Welcome to Day 19 of this Year's Poem Farm Project!
Find the Complete April 2015 Poem and Song List Here
First, I would like to welcome all old and new friends to The Poem Farm this April. Spring is a busy time on all farms, and this one is no exception. Each April, many poets and bloggers take on special poetry projects, and I'm doing so too. You can learn all about Sing That Poem! and how to play on my April 1st post, where you will also find the list of the whole month's poems and tunes as I write and share them. If you'd like to print out a matching game page for yourself, you can find one here, and during April 2015, you'll be able to see the song list right over there in the left hand sidebar.
Yesterday's poem was Small Wish. Here is the tune that goes along with it, below. Did you figure it out?
And here, below, is today's poem. Look at the song list in the sidebar or on your matching form to see if you can puzzle out which tune matches this one.
Singing Spices
by Amy LV
Students - Today's poem is all about meter. It's simply a list of spices, and as my daughter Georgia said, as a poem it really doesn't stand on it's own. But it is singable!
To find spices of varying syllables and stresses, I visited Wikipedia and kept scrolling up and down to find out which spices I'd choose from the spice rack of the Internet.
Wikipedia Spice List
I was sad to learn that salt is not a spice at all, and this fact sent me back to revision-land.
When I sang the poem, I learned that I had repeated "tarragon" a couple of times. In an earlier draft, I'd repeated "pepper" a couple of times. This was rather maddening. Back to the singing board again and again I went. This was a really good exercise...and tougher than I thought it would be. I even had to look up how to pronounce tumeric!
Just a Couple of Drafts
Photo by Amy LV
You might enjoy this writing exercise too. Think of a category: arctic animals, frozen foods, clothing, anything at all. Then, make or find a list of all of these things and see if you can sing them to a song. It's actually quite good writing practice.
To check yourself, ask someone else to sing the song. That is how you'll really know if it works.
Here, from New Iberia, Louisiana, is Margaret Gibson Simon's student Emily Genest, singing her own poemsong at Reflections on the Teche. Can you figure out the tune to Emily's funny words?
Teachers - You will not want to miss tonight's #nctechat on Twitter! Mary Lee Hahn and Janet Wong are hosting a chat all about poetry! You can read their blog post - "What is the Role of Poetry in Literacy Learning? - here. If you are new to Twitter, you can learn about getting started at Edudemic.
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