Goodbye!

I am participating in Screen Free Week
from Monday, April 29 through Sunday, May 5. 

In the meantime, I invite you to pledge to unplug with me.

Let's play outside! Let's make something!

One Charming Fountain

Welcome to Day 28 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 28 - Waterless Fountain

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - I notice that this month, I have been pulled toward sketching many artistic objects.  There is something about interpreting an object that was conceived of by another human, something different from drawing nature.  I feel a connection to the person who made this fountain, this person I will never know.  And I think I'm getting better at some small elements of perspective too.

This blog and The Poem Farm Facebook page will be dark from Monday, April 29 - Sunday, May 5 as I am participating in Screen Free Week.  I welcome you to unplug with me!  

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Hidden Doorways are Everywhere

Welcome to Day 27 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 27 - Doorway in Texas

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - This afternoon I was taking a walk through a little shopping plaza in Fort Worth, Texas, and noticed a small little turn into a wee courtyard.  It was brick and cozy and had this doorway leading out onto the street and a view of the train tracks. As I sketched this door and vine and brick and wrought iron, I listened to the sounds of trains going by, here and there, to and fro, carrying people through their lives.  

Doorways are very interesting to me, and this one particularly so because while all of the courtyard construction seemed new, the wood for these doors - and the hardware - looked like it had come from an old barn.  I like the feeling of possibility offered by a door or a window.  There may be a poem here.  Yes siree Bob.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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A Wind Chime, Keys, and Photograph Poems

Welcome to Day 26 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

As a part of this project, you may remember that along with the daily drawings, I will be posting at-least-weekly poems inspired somehow by that week's drawings.  Here is my fourth one.

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem grew from yesterday's drawing of the bottle wind chime that hangs on our family's porch.  The note from my sketch, "It is an old princess of a bottle, and she wears jewels made of glass" stuck with me.  I decided to let this bottle live in a poem as resurrected royalty, found by two children.  The poem is quite close to the truth of how this wind chime actually came to be, and I very much enjoyed spinning some pretty words around this recycling project.

Many cross-outs went into the making of this poem, as did many line break changes.  What began as quatrains turned into two stanzas of nine lines each and a final stanza with three lines.  Typing my work after fiddling with it in a notebook often helps me with these types of line break decisions.

Here is my drawing of the day, something from my purse.

Day 26 - Keys

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - I made today's sketch while sitting on the plane.  (Truth be told, I wrote the poem on the plane too!)  We were flying from Boston, Massachusetts to Fort Worth, Texas and I had not yet sketched for the day.  The seat in front of me was not so interesting, so I rummaged around in my purse and found keys.  This was an amazing feat, because I can never find keys.  But drawing them helped me hold onto them in a different way.  I was transported back to my own after school days, my first grade diary, a trip with my dad, my first car...all from a handful of jangling metal.  Who knew?

And now....a POETRY PEEK!

Today I am very excited to welcome second grade teacher Barbara Nadori and her young photographer poets from the Mast Way School in the Oyster River School District in Lee, NH..  They published their class book on Shutterfly (you will need to be a member to see the whole book). Here are a few pages from their beautiful book, and below the images you can read as Barbara explains how she and her students created such a beautiful volume.  Please know that every single photo and poem in this book is a stunner, and I chose merely to represent a variety of poem and photo styles.

Click to enlarge each photograph and poem.

Barbara Nadori, second grade teacher of these thoughtful photographer poets explains.

The process was actually much easier and resulted in much more than I had anticipated. I was interested in having the class take photos of everyday scenes in nature and outdoors around the school. I have a class parent who is a photographer. She came in and showed some of her work. She does wonderful projects around the world. She really only gave them a couple of tips: look for unusual angles to shoot; don't feel you need to shoot a whole figure; move the camera around. I asked the class to bring in cameras and I had some from the school. We went outside on a winter's day and the class dispersed and went around taking photos.

Later that week, we looked at the photos on a Promethean Board and the children picked two of their photos to write poems about. They were allowed to decide if their photos would be in color, enhanced color or in black and white. Once the photos were printed, we were ready for poetry writing. I showed the class a photo that I took and also modeled 5 or 6 different types of poems that I wrote about the photo.. Some were list poems, repeat-a-line poems, ones with metaphors and ones that flowed into one thought like a Haiku poem might do. 

It was amazing to see that in about 20 minutes or so, each child came up with a first poem for one photo. There was a minimal amount of revision, sometimes just looking for a more interesting word or avoiding repetition of the same adjective, etc. Over the course of the year, we have been noting interesting and descriptive language in the books we read. I think that inspired the class to use more imaginative language.

The project was fun and I think each child was proud of the results.

I feel so lucky to have a blog because it gives me the chance to read and share poems and artwork such as all of these by these second graders.  Thank you very much to Barbara Nadori and her students for joining us today.

Today is Poetry Friday, and Laura Purdie Salas is hosting the festivities for this last Friday of National Poetry Month over at Writing the World for Kids. Visit  to find your way to this week's poetry goodies around the Kidlitosphere, and don't miss all of the great Poetry Starter Videos she has shared for every single day of this month!

Next week I will share a few pictures from the Texas Library Association Conference.  That is where I am right now along with Sylvia Vardell, Rebecca Dotlich, Jane Yolen, Michael Salinger, Charles Waters, and so many of my other favorite writers and people!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Blue Bottle Beauty

Welcome to Day 25 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 26 - Recycled Wind Chime

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - For today's drawing, I walked outside, looked around, and let my heart choose. It chose this old bottle-turned-wind chime, a recycled beauty.  Sketching this old thing now new again, I realized that my sketches are wishing for color.  Soon I will buy some watercolors and a black pen with waterproof ink.  Looking at and thinking about this sketch makes me want to go and draw all kinds of recycled things, just like the metal rooster from the other day.  Hmm...I'm seeing a pattern here.

Tomorrow is Poetry Friday, and in addition to a sketch and a poem, I'll be featuring Barbara Nadori's second grade student photographer poets!  Please be sure to come back to read their work.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Sleeping Animals are Still

Welcome to Day 24 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 24 - Sleeping Kitty

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - This sketch was different for me because I mostly tried to follow the shape of the kitty's fur without drawing much of an outline first.  Animals are tricky because they move, but catching Mini sleeping allowed me to concentrate on his face a bit.  Next time, I will try his body too. He is very very furry, and so I'll try to follow the fur.

Last night, I was a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  Here is the archived chat if you would like to check out the links and ideas shared.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Metal Rooster...You're the One!

Welcome to Day 23 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 23 - Garden Chicken

Click to enlarge the picture.

Students - Do you think that this garden chicken is friends with the real chickens?  I do! This chicken sits in my yard, right outside the front door.  He's our watch rooster, like a watch dog.  I think he's so funny that I may just have to draw him again soon.  There's a poem in this metal rooster.  Can you find it?  Actually, there may be twenty poems in this recycled rooster.  Or one hundred.

Recycled Rooster

Photo by Amy LV

Thank you very much to Joy Acey for holding a raffle to celebrate her blog - Poetry for Kids Joy - birthday!  I was the lucky winner of this POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL t-shirt featuring all 110 poets' names on the back.  I have two poems in this anthology, one about the feeling of being new on a team and one in which a young person sticks to vegetarian values.  When I got home from IRA late last night, I thought I'd try it on my new owl puppet.

Favorite New Owl Puppet in My Favorite New Shirt

Photo by Amy LV

Common Core or TEKS Edition

Available through Pomelo Books

Here are several of us at IRA, outside of the restuarant called FEAST, holding copies of different editions of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY.

Outside FEAST in San Antonio, TX

Back Row - Sandy Harrision, David Harrision, Mary Lee Hahn

Front Row - Janet Wong, Me, Sylvia Vardell, Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Photo by Mark LV

It was an honor and such fun to be a part of this panel - POETRY AND COMMON CORE CONNECTIONS - with the poets and educators you see below.  We had a good sized group of warm and energetic folks in our session, and the hour flew by. 

Our IRA Panel (L-R)  - Janet Wong, Me, Sylvia Vardell, & Joyce Sidman

Poetry Friday Blogger Friends - Ruth Bowen Hersey and Mary Lee Hahn

Photo by Mark LV

After the session, Joyce and I signed books in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion booth.  I felt so lucky to have the chance to chat with her one on one.

Signing with Joyce Sidman at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion Booth

Photo by Mark LV

Tonight, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Daily Objects Help Us Remember

Happy Earth Day! 

I feel very lucky that my friend Tabatha Yeatts is featuring one of my nature-y poems and a few poemlinks at her rich and wonderful blog The Opposite of Indifference today.  Tabatha also directs us to a few very inspiring sites which offer ideas for honoring our Earth.  Thank you so much, Tabatha!

Welcome to Day 22 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 22 - The Iron

Click to enlarge the picture.

Students - Today's sketch is not of something I find particularly beautiful or inspiring, but it is about something useful and modern: an iron.  I'm not a big ironer, but sketching this hotel room iron reminded me of a story from my family's history.

When my grandparents (on my mom's side) were newly married, my grandfather complained about the way my grandmother ironed his clothing, saying that she "didn't do as fine of a job as his own mother had done."  Well.  You know what my grandma did?  She never ironed another piece of his clothing again!  I love this story of my strong lady grandmother from way back in the mid-1920s.  Stories like this help me understand the women from my past, and they help me feel strong too. Old family stories like this help us understand who we are.

Ask someone in your family to tell you an old story.  You might look at photographs and ask about the people, or ask if there is an old story that your mom or dad or aunt or uncle heard over and over again. Or look at an old passed-down object like a watch or a toy or a book and ask..."What is the story behind this?"  Then...write.

I am honored to be presenting later today on a poetry panel with Sylvia Vardell, Janet Wong, and Joyce Sidman at IRA, and I am grateful for Clarion having sponsored my wonderful trip here and last night's glorious dinner.  Next week is the TLA conference, and I look forward to all I will learn there too.  What a lovely Poetry Month it has been.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from last Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

If you are interested in winning a copy of FOREST HAS A SONG (a good book for Earth Day), do check out the left-hand sidebar here where you will see four different blogs that are currently offering giveaways of the book.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Sketching Light Wherever I Find It

Welcome to Day 21 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Day 21 - Hotel Lamp

Click to enlarge the picture.

Students - Today's drawing reminds me a bit of my streetlamp drawing from Day 6 of this project. I am finding that I am drawn to sketching old objects, things in nature, sources of light.  I still want to draw more buildings.  The things that call my pen are the ones that have stories that most intrigue me.  And in the same way that daily writing shows me who I am, sketching is holding up a new mirror to my brain and soul.

Working on this lamp and reading some notes from teachers, I am wondering about the young readers of this blog and if any of you are experimenting with drawing to write.  If you are, please comment to let me know.  It would be an honor to feature some of your work here, to learn about the ways in which drawing is informing your writing or thinking.

If you did not stop by on Friday, do not miss the fourth grade history poems by Theresa Annello's students at Paul Road Elementary in the Gates Chili Central School District in Western New York.

Right now I am happy to be in San Antonio, Texas at the IRA convention.  I will be signing FOREST on today and tomorrow, and am very excited to be presenting on a panel with Sylvia Vardell, Janet Wong, and Joyce Sidman on Monday as well.  Then, the following weekend...I'm back to Texas for the TLA conference.  Happy Poetry Month indeed!

On this coming Tuesday, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Drawing and Writing What's Under the Couch

Welcome to Day 20 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

Click to enlarge the picture.

Students - Last night when I was about to draw, my husband handed me a recorder he had just found under out couch.  "Is anyone looking for this?" he asked.  "Here, I'll take it," I said.  "I'll draw it."  See, it doesn't always matter what the subject is or how wonderful the idea-of-the-day is.  What matters is the work.  What matters is the practice.  The same is true for writing.  There are days (last Thursday for Friday's post, for example) when I have no idea what to write.  But I still write.  And an idea, good or less than good, does come.

It was neat to remember all of those music things.  I think I may have a few poemideas tucked away now.

Trust the work.

If you did not stop by yesterday, do not miss the fourth grade history poems by Theresa Annello's students at Paul Road Elementary in the Gates Chili Central School District in Western New York.

On this coming Tuesday, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!

Collecting Stars and History Poems

Welcome to Day 19 of Drawing Into Poems, my daily drawing/seeing/writing study into poetry.  You can read more about this month-long project here on my April 1 post.  Feel free to read the books with me and pull out your own sketchbook and jewelry box full of metaphor too...

As a part of this project, you may remember that along with the daily drawings, I will be posting at-least-weekly poems inspired somehow by that week's drawings.  Here is my third one.

Students - Today's poem grew (oddly enough) from my watering can drawing.  I did lots of writing off of that drawing (just doodling around with words, waiting to see what would come) when I wrote the phrase, "I'd like to fill a watering can with stars."  I followed that trail for a while until it finally grew into this little verse.  My favorite part about it is that really short last line.  I want to experiment with switching up the meter at the end of a poem a bit more.

And here is the drawing of the day, my first building of the month.

Day 19 - A Building

Click to enlarge the drawing.

Students - As soon as I saw this window, I knew I needed to draw it.  Why?  Because it had a lot of angles, and angles are pretty scary to me.  When something is scary, the best thing to do is just tackle it straight on.  It's difficult for me to make something look three dimensional, and so exercises like this are just what I need. Maybe I will keep looking for more interesting windows to draw; maybe I'll even frighten myself into getting good at drawing them!

I could not be happier to welcome fourth grade teacher Theresa Annello (who also shared Poetry Calendars with us in December of 2010) and her young poets, visiting us from the Paul Road School in the Gates Chili Central School District in Western New York. Theresa shares her class's exploration into writing history poems with us today.

Poetry is a good fit for many young readers and writers.  We continue to be blessed with growing additions to the world of children’s poetry. I am especially excited by the work with nonfiction poetry.  My fourth graders peruse the work of Jane Yolen and Joyce Sidman. These ladies are pairing poems and short informational articles like the party planners at our New York wineries. Here at the Poem Farm, students look forward to our visits clamoring for the poems and the accompanying student notes. We love the way Amy makes us feel as though she is speaking to us!

Last year, Amy shared some information and background for writing History Poems.  The mentor list was especially helpful as I began to plan for our Iroquois poetry writing.  I perused the wonderful anthology by Lee Bennett Hopkins HAND IN HAND. We studied “Harriet Tubman” by Eloise Greenfield, “John Hancock” by Lee Bennett Hopkins, & “Paul Revere Speaks” by Myra Cohn Livingston. A while back we had also read “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus.

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Amy’s question, “Does this poem speak to us FROM the past or does it speak to us ABOUT the past?” guided our thinking and discussion.  Students noticed that Paul Revere was speaking to us ABOUT his life. On the other hand, in Hopkins piece Hancock is quoted but not the narrator of this poem ABOUT the past. It seemed that writing FROM the past could be tricky, but several students were up for the challenge.

Since it was several months into the school year, students were generally comfortable with poetry both as readers and writers. In the fall, we put on masks and pretended to be something or someone else. We wrote mask poems from varied points of view: pencils, ice cream, video games, pumpkins, and more.

For this task, students could choose the type of poem as long as their writing was a sampling of what he or she learned about the Iroquois. We brainstormed and listed possible subtopics. Next came modeling/shared writing of a poem ABOUT the Iroquois Confederacy. The first few stanzas looked like this:

Years of disagreement,
Years of war,
A time of great sorrow and terror
For five Iroquois nations.

Along came a wise man
with a message of hope.
Good news of peace and power.
“Stop the madness,”
“No more death and destruction.”

Deganawida was his name
But most knew him as
The Peacemaker.

It was time for writers to have a go on their own.  At first many students tried to write from memory, soon realizing they needed to refer to their notes, handouts, and books. I thought writing a “Found Poem” might be a possible scaffold to try in the future.  However, for our first attempt with History Poems, I was especially impressed with their topic selection and voice. In the past, many students have written the dreaded acrostic poem, simply grabbing random facts to match a given letter. The result of which was often a rambling mismatched bouquet of wild flowers.  The mentor texts, the shared experience, and the exposure to different formats supported writers and led to successful History Poems.

Here is a sampling of poems penned by 4th grade writers (click to enlarge):

Thank you so much to Theresa and to her students for inspiring us with their history poems today. This is such a wonderful way to wrap up a unit of history - write a poem!   Find more about Theresa's writing and teaching at her warm and inspiring blog, Looking for the Write Words.

If you would like to see more such POETRY PEEKS into classrooms, please just click here or the POETRY PEEK button above.  Teachers - I welcome each of you to contact me about sharing a poem project or some student work here.

If you are interested in winning a copy of my new book, FOREST HAS A SONG, look in the left hand sidebar of this blog, and you will see four blogs that are currently offering a giveaway for the book.  And if you would like to hear the radio spot I did about the book last weekend with Linda O'Connor for her Parent Talk program on The Breeze here in Buffalo, NY, you can listen to it here.

Click the arrow to hear the interview.

This weekend I head off with my husband to San Antonio to the IRA convention.  I will be signing FOREST on Sunday and on Monday, and am very excited to be presenting on a panel with Sylvia Vardell, Janet Wong, and Joyce Sidman on Monday as well.  Then, the following weekend...I'm back to Texas for the TLA conference.  Texas, here I come!

Today I am guest posting over at Caroline Starr Rose's blog, Caroline by line.  The topic?  Poem spools!

Next Tuesday, April 23, I will be a guest of Wonderopolis for this month's #WonderChat celebrating poetry and wonder.  This is the chat rescheduled from Monday evening, and I hope that you will be able to join us!

Today is Poetry Friday, and Irene Latham is hosting the festivities over at Live Your Poem. Visit her inspiring blog to find your way to this week's poetry goodies around the Kidlitosphere!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes!