poetry

2024 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Events Roundup

~ jama ~ 49 Comments

Happy April and Happy National Poetry Month!

It’s time once again to read, write, share, and simply indulge your love for poetry in every way. I’m happy to be back rounding everyone up this year and look forward to checking in with all of you throughout April.

New to National Poetry Month and wondering about ways to celebrate? Visit the NPM webpage at The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) for a cool list of activities, initiatives and resources. You can learn about Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 18), sign up for Poem-a-Day to receive poems in your inbox, and review 30 Ways to Celebrate NPM online, at home, in the classroom, or at readings/events near you. Do as much, or as little, as you please. Just enjoy!

The 2024 poster features artwork by award-winning children’s author and illustrator Jack Wong, and lines from “blessing the boats” by beloved poet Lucille Clifton. Wong was selected by Scholastic—the global children’s publishing, education, and media company—to create the artwork for this year’s poster as part of a new National Poetry Month initiative between the publisher and the Academy of American Poets. You can download a free PDF of this poster here, and check out the Teach This Poem lesson featuring the poem and the poster here.

Now, here’s a list of what some kidlit bloggers are doing. If you’re also celebrating National Poetry Month with a special project or blog event, or know of anyone else who is, please email me at: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com, so I can add the information to this Roundup. Thanks, and have a beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, productive, and memorable April!

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a little spring poetree

~ jama ~ 40 Comments

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

It’s spring, it’s spring! At last, at last!

We must celebrate, of course.

The robins have returned from their winter vacations and our daffodils are showing off their cheery yellow bonnets. But to me the most dramatic part of the spring show is when the dogwoods bloom and the trees green up. One day, tiny little buds on bare branches, and the next, a rejuvenating leafy canopy. Somehow, this sudden transformation always takes me by surprise. No matter what kind of winter we’ve had, the leaves always come back, truly nature’s gift of hope.

“Dogwood Tree” by Peggy Davis.

Today I’m happy to share three poems from Allie Esiri’s anthology, A Poem for Every Spring Day (Macmillan Children’s Books, 2021). John Agard’s charming poem features a tree’s point of view, Larkin pauses to reflect on spring’s promise, and the way Nesbit whimsically personifies different tree species is sheer delight. They’re all a welcome balm after the cold, a good way to celebrate this season of growth and renewal.

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“Happy Tree” by Mary Price (acrylic on canvas, 2020).
A DATE WITH SPRING
by John Agard

Got a date with spring
Got to look me best.
Of all the trees
I’ll be the smartest dressed.

Perfumed breeze
behind me ear.
Pollen accessories
all in place.

Raindrop moisturizer
for me face,
Sunlight tints
to spruce up the hair.

What’s the good of being a tree
if you can’t flaunt your beauty?

Winter, I was naked
Exposed as can be.
Me wardrobe took off
with the wind.

Life was a frosty slumber.
Now, spring here I come.
Can’t wait to slip in
to me little green number.

~ Copyright © 1983 by John Agard.

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no waffling over waffles

~ jama ~ 33 Comments

“Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.” ~ Carl Sandburg

Would you like butter and syrup, or fruit and whipped cream with yours?

“Summer Breakfast” by Dwight Luna (oil on canvas).
WAITING FOR WAFFLES
by Pam Lewis

Eons pass
as steam swirls from the waffle iron.
 
Inside lies the pale magma                                            
of an unformed planet                          
 
the Precambrian                        
in the geology of breakfast
 
terrain untouched by syrup rivers,  
innocent of cinnamon showers
 
its pocked topography slowly               
browning, its ridges crusting
 
as epochs roll on in miniature
beneath a jagged steel sky.  

~ ©2023 Pam Lewis, as posted at Your Daily Poem.
“Big Waffles” by Mary Ellen Johnson (oil on panel).
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all we are saying is give peeps a chance

~ jama ~ 40 Comments
“Peeps” by Leigh-Anne Eagerton (oil on panel).
PEEPS 
by Judy Fort Brenneman

If Peeps are in the store, can Spring be far behind?
My hand, reverent, traces the crackle of cellophane
That shelters conjoined confections.
Soft shapes in bright colors—
Yellow, pink, and this year, blue—
(Yellow is the best, anyone could tell you.)
Colors of spring more true than the purple crocus
Frozen in its bulb under the snowbank at the end of the drive.

My hand plucks them like seed packets.
One, two, three four five.
Odd numbers are best—no one notices
If you eat the odd one before you get home.

The register beeps the red total.
The clerk says leave them out overnight
In the open, without cellophane;
That's the best way, she smiles.
I smile back; who am I to tell her she's wrong?
Naked Peeps are soon as hard and dry as sun-baked dirt
At the end of August.

My five small packs nestle in the sack
Like boxes of tulips minus the stems.
My thumb punches through the cellophane of the one on top—
Better than any groundhog's shadow,
More pure than the first robin's song,
A promise of pollen shakes loose with sugar spilled on my lap.
I pull the yellow blossoms apart,
And eat Spring.

~ Copyright © 2023 Judy Fort Brenneman as posted at Your Daily Poem.

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“The Scream” by Lisa Johnson.

The thing about Peeps is that you either love ’em or hate ’em. Kind of like candy corn at Halloween, Peeps are undoubtedly divisive.

Made of sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, food coloring, carnauba wax and a preservative, Peeps aren’t exactly the healthiest treat. Yet for many of us, it’s all about the nostalgia — memories of childhood Easter baskets, debating over which color or shape is best, whether to eat them fresh or stale.

What can I say? I’ve always liked marshmallow: chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies, mini mallows in cocoa, s’mores. ‘Nuff (or should I say ‘fluff’) said. 😀

“L.L. Peep” by the Vogt Family.

Yes, eating straight sugar is bad, but once a year, I don’t mind throwing caution to the wind. Note I said “once a year,” because those orange Halloween pumpkin Peeps or green Christmas tree ones are just wrong. Everyone knows Halloween = chocolate, and Christmas = cookies. Right? Some things, after all, are sacred.

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“My Mother’s Colander” by Dorianne Laux

~ jama ~ 42 Comments
“Christmas Morning” by June Webster (oil on canvas).
MY MOTHER'S COLANDER
by Dorianne Laux

Holes in the shape of stars
punched in gray tin, dented,
cheap, beaten by each
of her children with a wooden spoon.

Noodle catcher, spaghetti stopper,
pouring cloudy rain into the sink,
swirling counter clockwise
down the drain, starch slime
on the backside, caught
in the piercings.

Scrubbed for sixty years, packed
and unpacked, the baby’s
helmet during the cold war,
a sinking ship in the bathtub,
little boat of holes.

Dirt scooped in with a plastic
shovel, sifted to make cakes
and castles. Wrestled
from each other’s hands,
its tin feet bent and re-bent.

Bowl daylight fell through
onto freckled faces, noon stars
on the pavement, the universe
we circled aiming jagged stones,
rung bells it caught and held.

~ from Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton & Co., 2019)
“Morning Light” by June Webster (oil on canvas).

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