Rain
Rain talks outside my window.
I can't sleep, so I listen.
Apparently the storms
in the desert are full
of hot air, while monsoons,
billowing like bruises,
think they're better than all
the other rain. My rain,
with its silver throat
and its tip-tapping gossip,
may complain, but
I'm fond of it. Who else
will water my garden?
—Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved
Happily, a number of blogs in Kidlitosphere are dedicating themselves to special poetry projects and posts this month. Here's the line-up, which was carefully collected by author Irene Latham:
Susan Taylor Brown will post Lessons Learned (Mostly About Me) in a Poem-a-Day.
April Halprin Wayland will be writing and posting an original poem a day during April.
Liz Garton Scanlon will give us her third year of a Haiku-a-Day every day in April!
Jone MacCulloch will post 30 Days-30 Students: A poem a day from students.
Or check out A Poem A Day: A Personal Journey. Poetry Postcard Project: Have a student written and decorated poem sent to your home. Email your request to macrush53 @yahoo. com.
[Highly recommended] Gregory K. will present 30 Poets/30 Days - a whole month of never-before-seen poems by a slew of fabulous poets writing for kids.
Jama Rattigan will present her 2nd Annual Poetry Potluck (original poem and favorite recipe by guest bloggers). [I'll be featured one of these days, not sure of the exact date.]
Irene Latham will host a month-long Poetry Party: poetry quotes, trivia, craft tips, publishing resources & free books.
Andromeda Jazmon will be doing her fourth year in a row of haiga (original haiku + my photos) at A Wrung Sponge.
Janelle at Brimful Curiosities will host a National Poetry Month Kids Poetry Challenge in which kids are invited to create pictures for the poems she posts each Friday. Click here for details.
Biblio File will be featuring a poem or review of a novel-in-verse every day in April.
Anastasia Suen has set up a blog and a Twitter account for students (of all ages) to write haiku (about what they leaned at school that day).
Tricia Stohr-Hunt will host a Poetry in the Classroom series, which will highlight a topic, theme, poet, or book and talk about uses in the classroom.
Stasia Kehoe will be including poetry links, a giveaway of signed arc of debut YA verse novel Audition and reviews every Thursday of verse novels.
The Poem Farm will introduce a different poem idea-strategy or poetic technique for children and teachers every day. Each idea-strategy/technique will be followed by links to a few poems from this past year. The blog will also feature poem sharing ideas through "Poetry Peeks" into classrooms.
Lee Wind will present sprinkled-throughout-the-month GLBTQ poetry posts.
Mary Lee Hahn will be writing a poem a day again this year, and posting them at A Year of Reading.
National Poetry Month Poetry Friday schedule:
—April 1 at Poem Farm
—April 8 at Madigan Reads
—April 15 at Random Noodling
—April 22 at Book Aunt (right here!)
—April 29 at Tabatha Yeatts
Today's Poetry Friday is at Poem Farm. Take a look at all the links!
Note that I'll be hosting Poetry Friday on April 22nd. Every April, I luxuriate in all this poetry—and you can, too. Please celebrate with us!
9 comments:
If you do your editing in the "Edit Html" mode instead of "Compose" I believe you can avoid the formatting issues. Yes, it is frustrating!
I tried that! The paragraph/line breaks just won't stick. Oh well...
P.S. Ha. Another Blogger customer suggested I set up a Firefox account, so I did that and was able to fix everything. No thanks to the Blogger techs--Blogspot provides no actual way to contact anyone for help, which I find to be one of the most mind-bogglingly arrogant and demeaning aspects of some of these big companies on the Internet. (If all they do is have you talk to other customers, it's often a case of the blind leading the blind. In this instance, the Firefox solution doesn't actually require Blogger to fix their problem. One wonders if the Internet Explorer folks are aware of this...).
Next time I hear rain (and not snow) I will think of this poem. I love the idea of the rain telling of places far away. It is a chatty water cycle, and I like it too. Happy PF! A.
Thanks, Amy. "Chatty water cycle"--exactly. :)
And National Poetry Month is off to a good start on your blog!
I like your silver throated rain too. I read Taro Yashima's picture book Umbrella in the library to kindergarten and we were delighted with her description of the rain as tiny people dancing in the puddles. It's going to be a great month! Thanks for posting the whole line up!
I love the "tip-tapping gossip" of your complaining rain!
Wonderful poem! We often "listen to the rain," but what is it saying? Thanks for putting your ear to it!
Thank you, Andromeda, Mary, and Martha!
I will have to look for Umbrella...
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