Happy National Poetry Month!
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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
Students - Since we live in the real world and are simply visiting Little Red's world this month, I - through Lou - have chosen to share the backstory of her best friend Goldilocks, a character we readers may have once perceived as spoiled and bratty (Breaking and entering! Stealing others' food! Ruining chairs!) Lou shares that as in her own tale, there is always more to the story. We harken back to Poem 4 of this month, in which Lou confides in us about her own life.
Today's poem gives us a small window into a character's life beyond the tale.
And today, again, I had some fun with a name. Here is the meaning of Orla Lola Bruin:
Orla = Golden Princess
Lola = a nickname that may mean Sorrows or Warrior
Bruin = Bear
Writing this now, I realize that I did not look up the meaning of our wolf's name, Frank. Why didn't I do this? I am not sure. I will look it up now.
Hmmm....
Frank = Free One
Well, that turned out just perfectly, didn't it.
Thank you for joining me on this seventh day of HELLO MY NAME IS...
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. 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!
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I love the deep meanings of the names (especially Frank's...by accident)! And thanks for giving us the (Paul Harvey) rest of the story about Orla. I've been guilty of misjudging her, but now that I know ALL of her story, I'm changing my mind.
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