Words Live Inside of Words

 

Make Your Own License

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Every piece of writing has a story, and I love finding out why you write about what you write about and why you write about it in a certain way. The journeys are often surprising and roundabout, and these stories show how we each approach ideas in our own way. This is what makes the world neat!

Today's poem has a story too. Yesterday, I visited the blog Dare to Care, and in her post, Denise explained a new-to-me type of poem called an In One Word poem. Denise shared her own poem, and she referred readers to a blog post by April Halprin Wayland over at Teaching Authors.

Here is how April explains this form, in her May 22, 2020 post:

By April Halprin Wayland

Teaching Authors Blog, May 22, 2020

I wanted to try this out myself. What fun, to find words in words and then just play with them like piles of stones! So I chose the word SILENCE and entered it into Word Maker. This website will show you all of the words that can be made with the letters in the word you choose. It looks like this:

Word Maker - Website Currently Down

(I will correct when it is back.)

I looked at the many words that can be made from SILENCE, and I copied the ones that interested me into my notebook.

Drafting from Words in SILENCE

Photo by Amy LV

Then, from those words...I just played around and finally decided on the arrangement of words above to be the poem.

Here you can see the SILENCE words that chose to include:

Circled Words from SILENCE

Photo by Amy LV

I was most fascinated by the fact that LICENSE is an anagram (word made by rearranging the letters of another word) for SILENCE. That fascination formed the basis of today's whole poem. I mean, I really DO want a Silence License. 

Wordmaker is a very interesting site, and once it's back up again, I look forward to visiting it again. But of course, as April said, we can find words within words ourselves as well.

If you do not yet keep a collection of favorite words in your notebook, you might wish to start. Then, one day when you're not sure what to write about, you can choose one and see what grows from it.

Denise is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup at Dare to Care with her post-inspiring In One Word poem inspired by the word TESTITUDINATE and also by April Halprind Wayland. Please know that all are welcome each Friday as folks share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship.

xo,

Amy

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