maryleehahn

Poetry Friday Roundup Call

It’s that time again. Six-ish months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.

What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.

Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, “old school” in the comments, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.

How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you’re not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch…and learn! One thing we’re finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.

How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A(nother) Year of Reading, or I’d be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address.

Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It’s like hosting a poetry party on your blog!

Put your request in the comments (blog URL is appreciated) and I’ll update the calendar frequently. Feel free to share this post on all the various socials. And if WordPress is not playing nice, feel free to email me: marylee.hahn at gmail dot com.

And now for the where and when:

July
4 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading THEME: Poems of Protest
11 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
18 Jan at Bookseedstudio
25 Marci at Marci Flinchum Atkins

August
1 Jane at Raincity Librarian
8 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
15 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
22 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
29 Karen at Karen Edmisten*

September
5 Heidi at my juicy little universe
12 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities
19 Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup
26 Amy at The Poem Farm

October
3 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
10 Linda at TeacherDance
17 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
24 Patricia at Reverie
31 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch

November
7 Laura at Laura Purdie Salas
14 Carol at The Apples in My Orchard
21 Janice at Salt City Verse
28 Buffy at Buffy Silverman: Children’s Author

December
5 Irene at Live Your Poem
12 Linda at A Word Edgewise
19 Michelle at MoreArt4All
26 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect

Poetry Friday: Hello!

You think you’re just going for a bike ride, and then The Universe gives you a Big Message for the day.

Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at More Art 4 All, and one of my favorites — a Red-winged Blackbird!

(image via Unsplash)

Poetry Friday: Fuel

In between writing this poem and today, the iris HAVE bloomed and I have spent time each day with my face buried in their generous blooms, breathing in their delicious once-a-year scent: fuel.

With what fuel are you stoking your heart these days? I’m guessing poetry might be one way.

Sarah Grace Tuttle has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. Not only is she sharing a digital chapbook of her Poetry Month protest poetry, she has some questions for you, too.

Poetry Friday Roundup is HERE!

Happy end of NPM! I, for one, am not sad to leave behind spotlighting the absolutely RIDICULOUS list of words the administration wants to ban from our vocabulary, businesses, universities, grant applications, etc. All of my poems can be found at Poetrepository.

Linda M. gave the Inklings their May challenge:

Whitney Hanson is a young poet who has caught my interest. She shares primarily on TikTok. Hanson offers poems that begin with, “in poetry we say…” In these poems, Hanson takes a common phrase we know in English and translates it poetically. Her newest book, In Poetry We Say…(self-published March 2025) is a writer’s journal full of invitations to respond to, “in poetry we say…”

I see an invitation to write in a few ways:

Find a poem that you love to show how poetry translates English in a new way
Or,

Write poetry in a way that responds to the phrase, “in poetry we say…”

Go rogue and respond to Hanson’s poetry in any way that makes you happy

In a way, I met this challenge all month long in April, with the striking word of each acrostic the “in English we say” part of the invitation, and the actual acrostic the “in poetry we say” part. Looking back in my notebook, I found this draft from Laura S.’s February challenge, which seems like a fine companion to my April project AND an adequate response to Linda’s challenge.

In typography, the small space inside letters is called a counter.

A Count. Account. Counter.

I’m
mapping
all the words
for what I’ll say
twenty years from now.
I consider their shapes,
their volume, their urgency,
even the nearly hidden space
in each letter, known as the counter.

(c)Mary Lee Hahn, draft 2025

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core

Add your link to the Poetry Friday roundup here:

Poetry Friday: Historically

This NPM, I am writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website. You can find my poems each day on Poetrepository, IG stories, and BlueSky.

But today is special. This is a Poetry Sister Challenge Day, and this month we are writing in conversation with a vintage photograph. I chose to have a conversation with my father as a young man, and ponder everything that happened in his life after that moment was captured, up to and including my very own now.

Every single one of the “banned” words on the Pen America list is ridiculous. The whole list is ridiculous. You can’t erase words; you can’t erase history. We ARE our history. We exist. And we will keep talking about all of it. We will keep making art about and with all of it. Here’s mine so far:

April 1 Diversity
April 2 Climate Crisis
April 3 Transgender
April 4 Biases
April 5 Activism
April 6 Community
April 7 Pronouns
April 8 Gay
April 9 Hate
April 10 Elderly
April 11 Identity
April 12 Promote
April 13 Female
April 14 Belong
April 15 Minority
April 16 Activism
April 17 Measles
April 18 Victim
April 19 Accessible
April 20 Autism
April 21 Barrier
April 22 Equity
April 23 DEI
April 24 Definition

Heidi has this final Poetry Month Poetry Friday Roundup at my juicy little universe.

Here are the conversations the rest of the Poetry Sisters had with the vintage photo of their choice:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe

2025 Progressive Poem Day 20

Now more than ever, it is a blessing to be in community. I give thanks for this generous chorus of poets who have come together to create a poem for children, line by line. Special thanks to Margaret who wrangled us all together and to Irene, who invented this Poetry Month tradition.

April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/
April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog
April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at {fiction instead of lies}
April 22 Patricia Franz
April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

I lost track of a week’s worth of lines while I was “away from my desk,” and it’s a joy to see how this year’s poem has progressed! Impressive that we’ve maintained quatrains with a regular rhyme pattern. We’ve opened, raced, sung, and breathed. We’ve painted and communed, rejoiced and given thanks. In the current stanza, we bask, romp and startle. Such fun verbs! Here’s the poem I’ll pass to Cousin Tanita for the next line and the next stanza and the next action! I’m not adding punctuation to keep that pattern going, but I will modify the capitalization in the current stanza to match the rest. Now it’s up to Tanita to follow, bend, or break the “rules” we’ve all set!

Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air
stippling every dogwood
dappling daffodils with flair

Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming Sweetgum

Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilac and phlox
commune without constraints

Breathe deeply the gifts of lilacs
rejoice in earth’s sweet offerings
feel renewed-give thanks at day’s end
remember long-ago springs

Bask in a royal spring meadow
romp like a golden-doodle pup!
startle the sleeping grasshoppers
delight in each flowering shrub

Poetry Friday: Measles

This NPM, I am writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website. You can find my poems each day on Poetrepository, IG stories, and BlueSky.

Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Jone Rush MacCulloch.

Poetry Friday: Identity

This NPM, I am writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website. You can find my poems each day on Poetrepository, IG stories, and BlueSky.

April 1 Diversity
April 2 Climate Crisis
April 3 Transgender
April 4 Biases
April 5 Activism
April 6 Community
April 7 Pronouns
April 8 Gay
April 9 Hate
April 10 Elderly

Irene has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.

Poetry Friday: Biases

This NPM, I am writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website. You can find my poems each day on Poetrepository, IG stories, and BlueSky.

April 1 — Diversity
April 2 — Climate Crisis
April 3 — Transgender

Today, April 4, is an Inklings challenge day. Margaret invited us to try a Shadorma, a Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines respectively. So today’s poem, “Biases,” is a Shadorm-acrostic!

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core

Matt has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.

Slice of Life: National Poetry Month

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

Goodbye Slice of Life March Challenge…hello National Poetry Month Poem-a-Day Challenge!

This NPM, I will be writing acrostic poems using words from the Banned Words List at the Pen America Website.

It’s up to us to keep the truth in American history, and in science. It’s up to us to keep reading, thinking, and being as gloriously weird as possible. We must push back against the urge to obey in advance and we must defend our institutions. We must not let someone else dictate the language we choose to tell our stories, name our cultures and landmarks, and prevent us from telling all kinds of truths. I’ll do my small part by keeping some of the “banned” words in circulation by using them to write acrostic poems.

Daily poems will be found at Poetrepository, but I’ll round them up here at A(nother) Year of Reading on Fridays. Join me if you’d like!