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Poetry Friday: Cinquains Everywhere!
Cinquains are everywhere lately! They’re a fun, simple form that can pack a big punch. Check out Kelly Fineman’s Kid Magazine Writers — Meter Readers column on cinquains! I learned some new things reading her column. Here’s a cinquain from my book, Fuzzy-Fast Blur: Poems About Pets (Capstone 2008), which I blogged about here. Perfect
Poetry Friday: Written in the Stars (original poem)
I’ve been thinking about a variation on acrostics this week. They’re called phrase acrostics, and I hadn’t really heard of them until an instructor mentioned them in a poetry class I was taking last year at the Loft Literary Center. When she explained that you take a phrase or quotation and write a poem
Weaving: an autumn cinquain
It’s time for Pensieve’s monthly poetry challenge, Poetic License! The challenge this time? An autumn cinquain. I love cinquain, and I love autumn. This is one I actually wrote to a different image, and this is the closest I could find to share. Weaving???? Sunlight threads through stiff trees weaving a gold brown cloth The
Summer Souvenirs (an original poem)
Miss Rumphius’ Poetry Stretch this week was to come up with a summer poem. I confess I don’t like summer, which is heresy here in Minnesota. But on one of my many chauffeuring trips yesterday, I came up with part of this, so here goes: Summer Souvenirs sunshinevinyl seatsback of legssticking swimming poolcurly slidespopsiclelicking state parkcamping
What I Did at the Young Authors Conference
I’m sharing this not because it’s some stellar presentation, but because it’s always so helpful to me when people share the activities they do at school visits. I wouldn’t copy anything exactly, but it gives me good ideas and let’s me know what’s realistic. At the Young Authors Conference, I taught 3 sessions per day,
Twisted
This week’s Friday’s 40 at Pensieve is a great image! I love pictures of branches and trees. I’m not feeling great, but I want to participate. So, here goes…a little poem skeleton: Before School perched on a stoolencircled by Mom’s kneesas she pulledtuggedturned braiding orderinto my hairinto my life –by Laura Purdie Salas It’s not
Young Authors Conference: Individual Poems from May 21
I presented at a Young Authors Conference yesterday and worked with 4th and 5th graders all day at Anoka Ramsey Community College in Minnesota. What a great group! After some brainstorming and group writing, the kids wrote individual poems (cinquains) from the point of view of either a castle or the Loch Ness Monster. The
Young Authors Conference: Group Poems from May 21
Hi! Thank you for your attention and participation and enthusiasm yesterday. You guys rocked! I had so much fun writing poetry with you, and I hope you did, too. Here are the three group poems we wrote yesterday. For anybody reading this who wasn’t there, we worked on cinquains that were first-person from the point
Poetry Friday: A Sale!
I’m extremely excited to be able to share, finally, that I just signed and returned a contract to Clarion for a second picture book poetry collection! This collection of poems about books has kind of an interesting genesis, as I wrote 13 of the poems to submit for an anthology. Not one of them
Poetry Friday: A Crown Sonnet
I am so proud to be part of the crown sonnet project called Cutting a Swath, which a group of us are publishing on our blogs today! You can read all about the project at Liz in Ink, where Liz Garton Scanlon has the entire crown sonnet posted as well as links to each poet’s post
Flashy, Clashy, and Oh-So Splashy: Poems About Color
Last week, I received the author copies to the last book out of my set of 6 Capstone poetry books! I think this was the third book I wrote in the series, and it presented a little bit of a special challenge. Because the theme of the book was color, I wasn’t quite sure whether
Miss Rumphius’ poetry stretch: Metaphor Poem
This week, Miss Rumphius challenged us to a metaphor poem. Last time I participated, I wrote a roundel about dreams. This morning, as I lay in bed at 4:30 trying to fall back asleep (I’ve been waking up early–even earlier than my usual 5:30 time—lately), metaphors for dreams started to float through my head. So I
Do Buses Eat Kids? Poems About School
Here’s the next book in my series of 6 Capstone poetry books. I wrote this collection after And Then There Were Eight: Poems About Space. I had requested this theme of school poems to be kind of near the end of the set of six because I had a feeling it might be kind
Seed Sower, Hat Thrower: Poems About Weather
Here’s the next book in my series of 6 Capstone poetry books. After the fall poems, I headed into the weather batch of photos. This group was full of more stunning images. I was so glad I got to start with two subjects–autumn and weather–that really appealed to me. I love pictures of nature,
Shrinking Days, Frosty Nights: Poems about Fall
I’m continuing on here with chatting about each of my 6 Capstone poetry books. Today, I wanted to share a little bit about Shrinking Days, Frosty Nights, the very first book I wrote for this series. I chose this topic, out of the six topics, as my first manuscript to work on because I absolutely love
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Are You Looking For?
Go to my Poetry page for:
- National Poetry Month projects through the years
- Small Reads Roundups (poems grouped by topic)
- Introductions to several favorite poetry forms