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Throughout April (National Poetry Month), I'm posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. This week, I was in the mood for something short. I thumbed through my worn copy of The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco, but none of the 175+ forms jumped out at me. I wanted something new.

Then my son Jimmy sent me an article, "The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research," which defines (among other things) the ideal length of a tweet as 100 characters and the ideal length of a Facebook post as less than 40 characters. Naturally, I thought about writing poems short enough to be posted on social media.

I searched online to find out what already existed on the topic. In an article from 2011, Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's Poet Laureate, said poetry is "a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future – and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule – it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form."

To celebrate National Poetry Month, New York City hosted its fifth annual "#NYCPoetweet" Twitter poetry contest. So obviously, I didn't make up the idea of writing poems to post on social media sites, although I've posted a number myself. Haiku fit perfectly, as you can see in Laura's daily Riddle-Ku. Liz Garton Scanlon is posting a haiku on her blog every day this month. My cousin Maureen sent me an article about H. W. Brands (@hwbrands), an author, historian, and history professor who is tweeting "Haiku History: The American Saga Seventeen Syllables at a Time."

But a brief poem intended for social media doesn't need a specific form—it just has to be a short poem, maybe with a tangy metaphor, an alliterative pun, or a haiku-like twist. Writing short-short poems is practice in writing concisely. Here are a couple new ones of mine, both about this spring in Wisconsin:



I found social media-length poems on Twitter using these hashtags:

#micropoem
#micropoetry
#poemtweet
#poetrytweet
#poetweet
#twitterhaiku
#twitterku
#twitterpoem

Congratulations to our Fifth Blogiversary Book Bundle winners!
Rafflecopter lists our prize winners on the original post, so you can always check back there after a drawing ends to see who won. Five entries were chosen to receive five books each. Here are the winners:


New Teaching Author Book Giveaway!
Don't forget to enter for a chance to win a copy of Jill Esbaum's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest.

National Poetry Month
On my own blog, I'm posting more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats on Fridays through April. This week's post includes the final National Poetry Month giveaway of Write a Poem Step by Step. Be sure to stop by!

JoAnn Early Macken

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Hi Everyone,
This month, we've been having a great time celebrating our BlogiVERSEary by sharing audio and video clips of the TeachingAuthors reciting some of our favorite poems. If you missed any of them, here are the links one more time, in the order posted:

• April reading Janet Wong's "Liberty," from Declaration of Interdependence: Poems for an Election Year.
• Carmela (me!) reading our own April Halprin Wayland's "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which was originally published  in the 2009 edition of Greg Pincus's 30 Poets/30 Days project. (See below for a revised version of this great poem!)
• Video-recording of JoAnn, April, and Jill reciting a poem in rounds: Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama. If you've never heard a poem read in rounds, you definitely want to watch this!
• Esther reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s "My Shadow," from A Children's Garden of Verses.
• Laura reading Rudyard Kipling's "Seal Lullaby."

Our actual blogiversary is tomorrow, April 22. Believe it or not, we've been posting for FIVE years!

Our blogiversary giveaway runs through Wednesday, April 23, so if you haven't entered yet, be sure to do so on this blog post. And while our blogiversary celebration is coming to a close, the Poetry Month fun continues with JoAnn's weekly poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. JoAnn is also giving away copies of her terrific book, Write a Poem Step by Step on her blog.

Before publishing my last blog post, I double-checked with April regarding the formatting of her poem "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which I was sharing in my post. I was surprised to learn that she'd revised the poem since its first publication. Unfortunately, the news came after I'd already uploaded my recording of the original poem to SoundCloud and I didn't have time to re-record it before the post went live. I realized later that today's post was a great opportunity to share that revised version with you. I uploaded a new recording (email subscribers can listen to it here) and I copied the latest version of the poem below. If you want to compare the two, you can go back to my last post.

I'm hoping April will share with us her revision process, because, to be honest, I loved the poem the way it was. Of course, I like this version, too. J

                 How to Read a Poem Aloud (Revised Version)
                    by April Halprin Wayland

            To begin,
            tell the poet’s name 
            and the title 
            to your friend.

            Savor every word—
            let 
                each 
                        line 
                              shine.

          Then—
          read it one more time.

          Now, take a breath—
          and sigh.

          Then think about the poet,
          at her desk,
          late at night,
          picking up her pen to write—

          and why.



Happy writing!
Carmela

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I hope you've been enjoying our sharing of some of our favorite poems. I've really loved hearing my fellow Teaching Authors read!

I could never choose one favorite poem, but this is definitely one I come back to again and again. It has several elements I adore: rhyme, nature, the ocean, gorgeous language, a melancholy but still comforting tone, and content that acknowledges the dangers in the world but promises safety anyway.

Seal Lullaby

Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
  At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
  Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
  Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.

—Rudyard Kipling

And here I am reading the poem:



I hope you're having a terrific National Poetry Month! There's so much amazing stuff being shared in our kidlitosphere--it's hard to keep up, isn't it? I do hope you'll take a couple of minutes to go to our Blogiversary Post and enter our giveaway. You could win one of five book bundles from one of the Teaching Authors:>)

Artist/writer/blogger/poet and all-around lovely person Robyn Hood Black has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Life on the Deckle Edge. Have fun!

[posted by Laura Purdie Salas]

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Throughout April (National Poetry Month), I'll be posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. For today's workout, why not try a book spine poem?


Remember to enter to win one of five Teaching Authors Blogiversary Book Bundles! Details are here. 

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Hip (to the 5^th power) Hooray!
It’s our Blogiversary!!!!!
Our TeachingAuthors group blog has been teaching authors since April of 2009!


It’s also our Blogi-VERSE-ary, so smartly re-named by our reader Mary Lee of A Year of Reading, because we six TeachingAuthors chose to celebrate the occasion by reciting our favorite poem in honor of Poetry Month.



To plan a (highly-recommended) visit, click here.
Teachers can learn all about Poetry Out Loud in the classroom by clicking here.
So you’re never without a poem nearby, click here to download the Poetry App.




“Po-em is a two-syllable word, child!” she shouted. “How many times must I tell you all that?!  Now raise your head, start again and this time, for goodness sake, speak the words correctly!”
Ironically, when I was first trying my hand at writing for children, I wrote a poem entitled “P-O-E-M is a Two-syllable Word.” In time the title became a line in the first poem I ever sold, to Ebony Jr. magazine.  I’ve searched high-and-low for my copy so I might share the poem, but alas, no luck.  Even today, I can’t speak the word “poem” without enunciating clearly its two two-letter syllables.


He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head.
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

[Note: If you're receiving this post via email, here's the link to the Sound Cloud reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow by Esther Hershenhorn ]


             * * * * * * * *
I offer at least five bundles of thanks to you, our readers, for embracing our blog, and to my fellow TeachingAuthors too – Jill Esbaum, JoAnn Early Macken, Carmela Martino, Laura Purdie Salas, April Halprin Wayland and currently in absentia but always in my heart, Mary Ann Rodman and Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford, for embracing me.

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We Teaching Authors are celebrating National Poetry Month by posting recordings of us reading some of own favorite poems.

Today is my turn--lucky me! I spent a few days at a writing retreat with Teaching Authors Jill Esbaum and April Halprin Wayland, who generously helped me try something I've wanted to do for a long time: read a poem in rounds.

Here's our recording of Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama.

What fun! Thank you, Jill and April!

If you're reading this post via email, you can view the video on YouTube.


Poetry Friday
Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Today's Little Ditty. Enjoy!

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A HUGE thank you to Mary Lee, who blogs at A Year of Reading, for coining the word "blogiVERSEary" when she commented on April's post announcing our celebration and giveaway.

BlogiVERSEary is the perfect word to describe our theme this year. (Wish I'd thought of it when I created our Fifth Blogiversary logo!) Since our blog's anniversary falls during National Poetry Month, we thought it would be fitting for each of us to share a favorite poem, à la this year's Chicago Poetry Foundation's edition of the Favorite Poem Project. Esther is the one who brought the Favorite Poem Project to our attention, so I'll let her talk more about it when she posts. Meanwhile, if you're a teacher or parent, you may want to go ahead and check out their poetry lesson plans and other resources (after you're finished reading here, of course!).

To make our blogiVERSEary posts extra special, some (perhaps all) of the TeachingAuthors will share their favorite poems not only in printed form, but also via an audio or video reading. It's an opportunity for those of you we've never met to at least hear our voices. Creating an online audio or video clip is new territory for me. Unfortunately, I don't have a video camera, so I'll be sharing an audio reading, as April did.

I created a new account with SoundCloud, just for that purpose, per these instructions from the Poetry Foundation. After a couple of tense days when I couldn't get my account validated, I was finally able to upload the sound clip. If you are reading this post via email, you can go online to listen to the clip here. If you missed hearing April's reading of her favorite, give a listen to her Friday post. And while you're there, be sure to enter our blogiversary giveaway to win one of our FIVE "blogiversary book bundles," if you haven't already done so.

It took me some time to decide on just which "favorite poem" I wanted to share. The first poems I thought of were classics by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. But I really wanted to share something a bit more child-friendly. So I went over to check out Greg Pincus's annual 30 Poets/30 Days project. Poking around on the site, I discovered the perfect poem for our blogiVERSEary: "How to Read a Poem Aloud." It happens to be written by our very own April Halprin Wayland! Greg originally posted it in his 2009 edition of 30 Poets/30 Days, on April 28, 2009, just days after our TeachingAuthors blog debuted. And now, with April's permission, I'm sharing it here, as one of my favorite poems. You can also hear me read it below.

            How to Read a Poem Aloud
                    by April Halprin Wayland

            First, read the title of the poem
            and the poet’s name.

            Be clear.

            Now completely
            disappear.

            Let each line
            shine.

            Then read it
            one more time.

            When the poem
            ends, sigh.

            Think about the poet at her desk,
            late at night, picking up her pen to write--

            and why.
                             © April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. 


Now isn't that just the perfect poem for our blogiVERSEary?




Happy Poetry Month, and Happy Writing!
Carmela  

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.
Howdy Campers ~  Happy Poetry Month!  Happy Poetry Friday!  And...

Happy 5th Blogiversary to us!

On April 22, 2009, powered by the dazzlingly bright solar power of Carmela Martino, we started this blog.

Five years--what a fabulous ride it's been!

Five candles.  And when there are candles, someone makes a wish and blows them out. So you could say that this image represents the six active TeachingAuthors. (We're celebrating all TeachingAuthors who have been part of our blog biography.)

Campers, thank you from the bottom of our candles for reading, following, commenting and encouraging us. You're why we do this. You're why I'm terrified everytime a post is due. We want to add something meaningful and merry to the party! In celebration of You, this month's drawing is for one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book. Yay You! (Details below.)

This month, inspired by the Chicago Favorite Poem Project, each of us will share a favorite poem. One of mine is "Liberty" by Janet Wong, from her book, The Declaration of Interdependence--Poems for an Election Year and also included in Caroline Kennedy's Poems to Learn by Heart) read (and reproduced below) with Janet's kind permission:



LIBERTY
by Janet Wong from DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE – Poems for an Election Year

I pledge acceptance
of the views
so different,
that make us America

To listen, to look,
to think, and to learn

One people
sharing the earth
responsible
for liberty
and justice
for all.

Wow, right?  So much substance packed into 12 lines.

This month is overflowing with poetry!  Three TeachingAuthors are celebrating in three ways:

• Laura is writing riddle-me haiku;
• I'm in love with metaphors, so I'm having a metaphoraffair this month;
• JoAnn will be posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts here, while on her own blog she's adding more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats, including giveaways of Write a Poem Step by Step.

Also, Sylvia Vardell's Texas Women University students chose poems from the The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science: Poems for the School Year Integrating Science, Reading, and Language Arts and have made "poem movies" of them.  They'll appear on Sylvia's blog all this month. My poem "Old Water" will be featured on April 6.


--You have a chance to win one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book.

--Books will be mailed directly to the winner, so winners must have a US mailing address.

--You have 3 entry options, and can enter via 1, 2, or all 3 options to increase their chances. (We DO verify that you've met all the criteria for each option. Incomplete entries will be disqualified.)

1) Tell us how you follow the blog (by "follow" we mean some sort of automated subscription service, such as via email, Facebook, Bloglovin', etc.) We have links in the sidebar to make it easy to start subscribing if you haven't already.

2) Leave a comment on THIS blog post. If you have difficulty commenting, you can submit comments via email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com. For this giveaway, you need to include in the comment either a) the title of a favorite poem OR b) the title of a favorite TeachingAuthor blog post.

Please be also sure to include your name in the comment so we can verify you've fulfilled this option. [Some folks don't comment with their real name and we have no way of knowing who they are!]

3) Help spread the word. Share a link back to this blog post from your own blog, or from Twitter, Pinterest, or any other way we can verify online. You must include the URL of the link in the space provided.

And good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland.  Monkey's on vacation.

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Today’s Wednesday Writing Workout comes from Holly Thompson, a fellow TeachingAuthor, just in time to celebrate yesterday’s Delacorte/Random House release of her second young adult novel in verse, The Languge Inside.






Raised in Massachusetts, Holly earned a B.A. in biology from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in English (concentration creative writing/fiction) from New York University’s Creative Writing Program. A longtime resident of Japan, Holly teaches creative writing at Yokohama City University and also serves as Regional Advisor for the Japan Chapter of SCBWI.  Holly’s fiction often relates to Japan and Asia.


And, thank you for sharing your expertise with our TeachingAuthors readers – who happen to have only until Sunday, May 19 to enter our TeachingAuthors Blogiversary Giveaway!







1. Gather some narrative poems—poems that tell a story—to share with students. Examples are Gary Soto’s “Oranges,” Jeffrey Harrison’s “Our Other Sister,” Naomi Shihab Nye’s “My Father and theFig Tree,” and “Fifteen” or  “Traveling Through The Dark,” by William Stafford, and my poem “Cod” (published in PoetryFriday Anthology Middle School) 



a decision
a first time
a last time
a betrayal
an encounter
an argument
a mix-up
a lie


1. Read the narrative poems aloud. For each narrative poem, ask students to react. Ask: What lines or stanzas do you like? Why? What is the mini plot of the poem—what happens in this poem? Then have them look at the structure and style of the poem. Ask: Do the structure and style help create the narrative? How?

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In the Ford household, we've celebrated three birthdays, one First Communion, and Mother's Day (happy, happy!) all within the last month.  Heaven forbid we should rest on our laurels, so let's keep the party going with Children's Book Week!

In our next series of posts, the Teaching Authors are planning to share titles of beloved childhood books that have sadly been lost to the ages (loaned, tossed, or otherwise lost).  This is a timely topic for me, as my newly minted eight-year-old asked me last week for new reading suggestions.  We trekked together to the attic, where my childhood books are stored.  As an Army brat with at least 25 moves under my belt, I possess very few relics of my childhood -- toys, treasures, clothes, memorabilia.  But books, I was smart enough to schlep and save. 

I've got Charlie Brown's Super Book of Questions and Answers and the complete Bobbsey Twins (which, alas, I do not feel I can share with my daughter today, what with  Dinah and Sam and Flossie, her father's "little fat fairy" (goodness!)).  However,I pulled together a pile of about 12 books, old and new, that I think she will love.  I also did a quick and painful assessment of what I thought I had that I do not:
The Moffatts series by Eleanor Estes
Figgs and Phantoms and The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin
Most of the All-of-A-Kind family series
Anything by E.B. White (!)
And, for when my daughter is older:
Waiting for Johnny Miracle by Alice Bach
A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle

I am thankful that old and/or out-of-print books are now typically available on the Internet, though I suspect some of these will be hard to find.  I plan to get these books into my daughter's hands or die trying.

Happy Children's Book Week (and month and year) to all!  And if you haven't already done so, it's not too late to enter our Blogiversary Contest to win one of four gift certificates to Anderson's Bookstore.  Happy Book Buying to All! --Jeanne Marie

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