Friday, April 4, 2025

HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 4

  Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)


Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.


Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

And now for today!


Students - In today's poem, Lou (LRRH) reveals something new about herself - she has a dog! It is the wolf! Surprise! The poem is a free verse poem written in a conversational voice, and there is one poem-writing technique that I want you to notice. 

The last line - Nobody can. 

I placed this line all alone because it is an important line. Lou wants us to know that we can't be accurate when we try to judge people from one story. It is her message.

Leaving a lot of white space around a word or a line in a poem alerts readers to slow down their reading. If you wish to highlight importance in your poem, leave some white space around the important part.

Thank you for joining me for Day 4 of HELLO MY NAME IS...

Thank you to Matt for hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme with a celebration of his new book, A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS: MULTICOLORED POEMS FOR A MULTICOLORED WORLD. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. Thank you, Jama, for designing my logo for this month! And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

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6 comments:

  1. Ooh! Our poems "rhyme" today! Mine is a combo acrostic/shadorma of BIASES. We come to the same conclusion, btw... ; -)

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  2. "You cannot know a person/from one tale." There is so much truth here. It also resonates with Mary Lee's poem today.
    I'm loving this project.

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  3. What a surprising turn of things! Love the lesson Lou gives us and how that line smacks a punch out there all alone.

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  4. Enjoying these, Amy - what a great poetic exercise!

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  5. Amy- I always enjoy your poetry month project. Love the message in today's LRRH's poem.

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  6. Amy-- this is so fun! I'm a big fan of morphing fairy tales, and this is a version of the wolf I have never heard before. Thank you for the poem, and happy Poetry Friday!

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