Category: National Poetry Month

2023 Kidlit Progressive Poem, Day 1

About the Progressive Poem: Irene Latham began the tradition in 2012 and hosted until 2019. (Early archives here.) Margaret Simon took the reins in 2020. (Recent archives are tabs at the top of her page.)

Blogs where the next lines will be found are linked in the sidebar to the right.

The rules are few: “The poem will be passing from blog to blog with each poet-blogger adding a line. The poem is for children. Other than that, anything goes.” Each blogger will copy the previous lines exactly as written (unless permission from the previous poet is obtained) and add their line, including commentary on their process if they wish.

My process was scant. This line jumped into my head (and luckily, was captured in my notebook) on March 5. No other possible lines held up to the potential contained in this one. I love stories that start at the end, so here you go. Write me a story that ends with sudden clarity.

Happy National Poetry Month and Happy Progressive Poem! Let the fun and hijinks begin!

The Poetry Friday Roundup is HERE!

It’s a Poetry Quadfecta this week! It’s the last Friday of the month which means it is time for the Poetry Sisters’ challenge AND it’s the last day of March which means it’s National Poetry Month Eve AND the Poetry Friday roundup is here PLUS the 2023 Progressive Poem will launch right here tomorrow morning! (See sidebar for links to the rest of the lines/month.)

Let’s start off with my poem for the Poetry Sisters’ challenge. This month, we wrote etherees, a poetry form that begins with one syllable in the first line and continues growing each line by a syllable until the tenth line has ten syllables. Additionally, we tried to stick to our year-long theme of transformation. I’m using my etheree to announce my Poetry Month project.

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon

I wrote my etheree to announce my National Poetry Month project, which will be a month of cheritas.

This year, my National Poetry Month project will feature the cherita form. At the website The Cherita, the form is defined thus: “Cherita is the Malay word for story or tale. A cherita consists of a single stanza of a one-line verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then finishing with a three-line verse…The cherita tells a story.” Like last year, I will be publishing my poems daily at Poetrepository and crossposting here each Friday for Poetry Friday.

And now, for your poems! Click to add your link to the roundup:

Poetry Friday: My Chlorophyll Heart

My Chlorophyll Heart

I’m for photosynthetic optimism –
the bulbous kind you plant in the fall
in spite of squirrels who dig ruthlessly
and urban deer who nibble indiscriminately,
the kind that seed packets hold through the winter
believing in butterflies and hummingbirds
before they’ve ever known sun and rain.

Here’s to the blazing green energy of plants–
from the toughest blade of crabgrass
to the most tender spring ephemeral,
from the massive trunks of riverbed sycamores
to the tiniest pond-floating duckweeds.

I’m for the plants –
for the roots who go about their work
silently, mysteriously,
collaborating with mycorrhizal fungi.

And I’m for the leaves of trees –
especially sweet gum’s stars
and ginkgo’s fans.

I’m for the way we share the air with plants –
us breathing out, plants breathing in.
I’m for the generous chemistry of leaves,
combining carbon dioxide with water and sun,
creating carbon building blocks for itself, then
sharing the extras back into the soil for the microbes.

What moves me?
What plays me like a needle in a groove?
Plants.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to write in the style of Taylor Mali. The poem I used as my mentor text is Silver-Lined Heart. Next month we are writing poems around the words string, thread, rope, or chain.

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with:
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Kelly @ Kelly Ramsdell
Andi @ A Wrung Sponge

Happy Last Friday of National Poetry Month 2022! All of my NPM poems are archived here. Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Jone Rush MacCulloch. Like last weekend, I will be away from my computer this weekend and will look forward to catching up on your posts next week!

Poetry Friday: Earth Speaks

EARTH SPEAKS

My
oceans
are dying.
My forests are
cut down or burning.
My systems are weakened,
and my glaciers are melting.
So many species are extinct.
How can I convince you to help me?


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2022

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Today, Earth Day 2022, I’ll pass the mic to Earth and let her speak. All the rest of my NPM 2022 poems can be found at Poetrepository.

Margaret has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

Poetry Friday: Witnessing the Insect Apocalypse

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From the essay, “Loving a Vanishing World,” by Emily N. Johnston in ALL WE CAN SAVE:

“It’s a constant question for me every time I’m entranced by the beauty of this world: What does it mean to love this place? What does it mean to love anyone or anything in a world whose vanishing is accelerating, perhaps beyond our capacity to save the things that we love most?”

Here’s the 2018 NYTimes article about the insect apocalypse that’s been haunting me for four years.

This is not one of my more hopeful poems. It’s hard to witness the natural world fading away, but loving the world is the first step toward saving it.

Matt has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.

Poetry Friday: Contrails

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Contrails don’t give me hope in a time of climate crisis. They play a significant role in aviation-related global warming by creating clouds that trap heat on earth. But the fact that scientists are studying them does give me hope. The sudden, dramatic drop in airplane traffic in 2020 proved to researchers at MIT that their mapping of contrails was accurate. 

Researchers at the Yale School of the Environment remind us that the ONLY way to shut down global warming is to curb CO2 emissions. 

“But if the world wants a big short-term contribution from aircraft to keep us below some specific temperature target, such as 1.5 degrees C, then action on contrails can provide it.”

 Researchers at MIT are

“working with major airlines to forecast regions in the atmosphere where contrails may form, and to reroute planes around these regions to minimize contrail production.

Steven Barrett, professor and associate head of MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “There’s an unusual opportunity to halve aviation’s climate impact by eliminating most of the contrails produced today.”

“Most measures to make aviation sustainable take a long time,” Barrett says. “(Contrail avoidance) could be accomplished in a few years, because it requires small changes to how aircraft are flown, with existing airplanes and observational technology. It’s a near-term way of reducing aviation’s warming by about half.” “

Now THAT’S hopeful. Let’s go, airline industry. The ball’s in your court.

This poem was written using The Thing Is by Ellen Bass as a mentor text. All of my poems from this week can be found here.

Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.

2022 Progressive Poem, Day 4

The Progressive Poem has been around since 2012, when Irene Latham got it started. In 2020, Margaret Simon took the reins. I’ve taken part every year!

I thought I was being so clever this year, choosing a day early in the schedule when I would have a chance to perhaps bring the first quatrain to a close, or at least help set the intention for the poem, rather than trying to figure out how to continue it in the middle or turn it towards the end.

Come to find out, beginnings are just as hard as middles and ends. But I guess I already knew that. So now it’s been confirmed.

Irene gave us our first line this year, a quote from Emily Winfield Martin’s book, The Imaginaries. In the second line,  Donna gave us a quote from The Hobbit set us on the JOURNEY of a poem for two voices, perhaps told all in quotes. Catherine chose a line from The Wind in the Willows . Here’s the poem as I received it. A bold statement about the journey ahead, a polite refusal, and an enthusiastic encouragement to GO FOR IT:

For me, one of the quintessential children’s books featuring a journey is Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. If I had time, I’d reread the whole book. Just taking it off the shelf and flipping through the many sticky-noted and dogeared pages makes me wistful for all the times I read it aloud in my classroom. I didn’t have to read much to find the quote I needed for the poem. Salamanca Tree Hiddle both does and emphatically does NOT want to go on the journey to Lewiston, Idaho. “It was not a trip I was eager to take, but it was the one I had to take.” Her voice will add to the reluctance in Donna’s line, and we’ll have to see where Buffy takes us next.

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Here’s where the 2022 Progressive Poem has been and is going:

1 April 1 Irene at Live Your Poem
2 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
3 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
4 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
5 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
6 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
7 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
11 Janet Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
12 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
13 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
14 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
15 Carol Labuzzetta @ The Apples in my Orchard
16 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
17 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken Town
18 Patricia at Reverie
19 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
20 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
21 Kevin at Dog Trax
22 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
23 Leigh Anne at A Day in the Life
24 Marcie Atkins
25 Marilyn Garcia
26 JoAnn Early Macken
27 Janice at Salt City Verse
28 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
29 Karen Eastlund at Karen’s Got a Blog
30 Michelle Kogan Painting, Illustration, & Writing

Poetry Friday: NPM Day 1

I’m reading and listening to ALL WE CAN SAVE: TRUTH, COURAGE, AND SOLUTIONS FOR THE CLIMATE CRISIS. 

My poems this month will be inspired by the essays and poems in this book, and by this gorgeous living planet we call home.

Sometimes I get a panicky feeling about our future, but I’m trying hard to hold onto hope and to the actions I can take, no matter how small. It is not too late to turn things around, but I can’t sit on the couch waiting for someone else to do something. 

Throughout the week, I’ll be posting at Poetrepository, but I’ll do a mini roundup here on Fridays.

Today’s poem does double-duty. I challenged the Inklings to write a poem using The Thing Is by Ellen Bass as a mentor text. I wrote a couple of drafts, but when I fully processed that this poem would need to introduce my NPM project, it was back to the writer’s notebook to draft again.


Here’s how the rest of the Inklings interpreted my challenge:

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

Heidi has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe. Happy National Poetry Month! Let the flood of poetry begin!