Tuesday, March 7, 2017

SOL #7 Poetry Inspiration


This evening, I had the pleasure to work with 1st year teachers on Poetry Workshop with a colleague of mine. We talked about the structure of workshop and how to start poetry anthologies. We also let them participate in some poetry centers.

I shared a lot of resources with them, one being Kate Messner's 59 Reasons to Write. In this book, she has a chapter dedicated to poetry. One of the activities, which happens to be from Jo Knowles, was to think of a theme or topic and write your 10-digit phone number down the page. Those numbers become the number of words for the line. If the number is 0, it is a wildcard and can be any number of words. So I thought I would try that tonight using the phone number from my childhood, which is no longer in service. My topic is snow days.

I feel as if Mother Nature has
cheated us this year.
I live in Ohio,
what do you mean
you won't pleasure us with beloved snow days
this year?
Do you
not understand how much we look forward to
the anticipation of listening to the weather forecast
hoping for the opportunity for our snow rituals?


Happy writing!

6 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing your poem and reminding me of this exercise! I love 59 Reasons to Write!

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  2. I will have to check out her book. We too have been cheated in the South with no "cold." Aka too many days in the low eighties! I loved what you wrote though!

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  3. I love this! I saw this in the book last night and was thinking of trying it. You've inspired me! And as a fellow Ohioan, I too feel totally cheated this winter!

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  4. I'd seen this format the other day and did yesterday's post in this style. I really want to get her book. Also, here in rainy western Oregon we've had TEN snow days and two late starts. Crazy stuff.

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  5. oh my goodness- I LOVE this!! I too live in Ohio and hate that we had little to no snow!!

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  6. I love the idea of phone number poems! Saving this idea for a future slice :)

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