A(nother) Year of Reading

Back to Writing About Reading, Books and Teaching

Mary Lee and I had lunch last week and I told her how much I miss blogging. I loved the years that we blogged at A Year of Reading and life got busy and I just couldn’t keep up. Lucky for me, Mary Lee has kept up the blog with her incredible poetry. Since retiring, I’ve stayed busy (as I knew that I would!) but I am finally figuring out the ways that I want to spend my days. One thing that has become clear over the last few months is how much I miss writing about books and reading and literacy. So I am going to build back in this thing that I love.

I’ve been reading lots. I don’t get to spend as much time in classrooms as I did when I was teaching full time but I still work with teachers in and out of classrooms and I work with groups of children at OH What a Space so I am always reading and sharing books infomally.

So, every week, a few times a week, I’ll write about books and reading and children and literacy and learning. And, of course, the occasional random thing. I’ve decided to try Substack because I like the format and I like the community that has grown on Substack. Once I week, I’ll crosspost my writing to A Year of Reading (thanks to Mary Lee:-) because I still love that space so much and am excited to be part of it again. (You can find me on Substack here.) If I post more than once a week, you can find those posts on Substack.

It is an interesting time to be thinking about children and books and reading and education. There are so many challenges at a time when so many incredible books are being published. There are more mandated curriculums and more constraints. But teachers and families are still committed to joyful reading experiences for their children.

So I’ll share books that I’ve discovered with an eye toward instruction. I’ve always worked to support joyful literacy experiences for children of all ages—the kind that support children in becoming lifelong readers. There is nothing like falling in love with a good book. But as teachers, we also want our readers to grow as readers so our book choice and planning is always intentional. So, I’ll be sharing books with a lens toward instruction that is authentic—grounded in the kinds of conversations that will naturally emerge because of the book. I am looking forward to sharing books through my writing again:-)

Poetry Friday: Tritina

It’s been a minute, and I’m glad to be back! I missed this Poetry Friday community and the ritual of the weekly sharing of poetry.

I wrote this poem with two purposes in mind. First of all, my niece sent the beautiful artwork that illustrates my poem. To honor her gift, I wanted to write a poem in response. Secondly, this is Poetry Sister challenge week. So I wrote a tritina. As Cousin Tanita describes, “this less restrictive younger sibling of the sestina uses three repeated words to end three tercets. The order of word-endings for the tercets are 123, 312, 231, with a final line acting as the envoi, featuring all three words in the 1-2-3 order used in the first stanza. Additionally, we’ll continuing with our theme of poetry in conversation, in whatever way that is individually defined.” My poem is in conversation with E’s artwork.

I’m not sure how many of the Sisters will be able to join in this week, but here they are just in case:

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

Amy has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Poem Farm.

Poetry Friday: August

It’s highly ironic that this is the poem I’m sharing today…a cloudy, cool, drizzly-morning day with the windows open all day long. Suffice it to say, this poem is a highly accurate representation of the August we were experiencing when I wrote it!

I’m taking a blog break until September 26 when I’m planning to be back for the Poetry Sisters challenge. Happy September! See you on the other side!

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Beyond LiteracyLink.

Poetry Friday: So Much Shouting

That’s my TED talk for today. I’m over all the shaming that implies that if you’re not doing all the things someone else thinks you should be doing then you’re not doing enough to stop the fascist regime that’s taking over our country. We’re all in the same boat and all the responses are valid, especially the ones that BUILD community instead of creating even more layers of stratification and binary us vs them hoo-hah.

Heidi has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe.

Post written on Thursday, but edited now on Friday morning to add:
I support (100%) what Gavin Newsom and other Democratic governors are cooking up right now, which is a bit two-faced of me, since they are DEFINITELY using the “us vs them binary” in quite a powerful, in-your-face way. I guess the difference in my mind is that they are shaming the ones who actually deserve it, while us little folk without the power they wield, need to keep doing what we can with who we are and what we have. And in a way, they are doing what I advocate: building a community of leaders with the hutzpah to fight back.

Poetry Friday: Your Ideas Are Weeds

I’m having more fun with my personal Sealey Challenge this year than ever before! Right when it came out, I bought the big hunka-munka A CENTURY OF POETRY IN THE NEW YORKER 1925-2025. It’s been sitting on my desk ever since…until now. My challenge is to spend 30 minutes a day reading from it. I usually open to a random spot and go from there, keeping my notebook open to jot juicy words (including ones I’ve never heard and need to look up, as was the case for scaturient), titles of possible mentor texts, memories that are sparked by my reading, connections between poems, etc. I am also keeping my notebook open when I read through the Poetry Friday roundup, which is how I wound up writing this poem, which was inspired by “On Starting” by Phil Kaye from Tabatha’s post last week! The photo is via Wikimedia Commons. I’m too proud to use a picture of my yard, but it would certainly do.

Molly has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Nix the Comfort Zone. Remember, next week Heidi is subbing in for Margaret, who will take Heidi’s original spot on September 5.

Poetry Friday: Triptych

Catherine challenged the Inklings to try a triptych this month, using Irene’s recent blog post as a springboard.

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings tripped their tych, if end-of-summer mania allowed them join in:

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

Jane has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Raincity Librarian.

NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.

Poetry Friday: Sedoka

Image from the front page of The Burlington (CO) Record

I thought I was writing this poem to the photo that appeared on the front page my hometown newspaper, but as it turns out, the poem also has echoes in an extraordinary book that I finished just last night. THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell is set in Nebraska in 1935 between two cataclysmic environmental events: the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River (24 inches of rain in 24 hours). So it’s a story of the land, but inseparably, it’s a story about the people there. Here’s how Russell (with James Riding In) describes what she attempted to do in THE ANTIDOTE:

THE ANTIDOTE uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people’s private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.

It was a book that puzzled me at first, then fascinated me, then horrified me, then made me read the last hundred pages at a gallop (which is why I’m “late” posting), then ultimately left me with some measure of hope.

Which brings us back to the photo and the poem. I grew up at the edge of the same Pawnee lands in THE ANTIDOTE, in a part of the country where White farming techniques have resulted in loss of topsoil and the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. And I grew up with the myth of the noble (White) farmers, who toiled at the whim of the sparse rainfall and the destructive summer storms, and whose hope was what kept them going.

It’s time to tell the truth. All of it. And it’s time to listen to the land and agree to change the ruinous human part of our relationship with her. She wants to live, and she can heal, if we let her. If we help her.

Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins. You can find there the Poetry Sisters who had the bandwidth to write to this month’s challenge, to write a sedoka, along with others who joined in the challenge.

PLEASE NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.

Poetry Friday: Favorite Things

Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.

Poetry Friday: Independence Day Roundup of Protest and Praise for This Complicated Country We Call Home

Poetry is not news. It is not a comment upon it. Art does what art does, which is often a tricksy thing. — Pádraig Ó Tuama

You’re an artist if you create something! You’re an artist if you don’t see the worrld the way it is, if you hate white walls! No one else decides what art is, no one can stop you loving whatever you like, the cynics and critics can have control of all the other crap on the planet..but they can’t decide how hard your heart beats! Become whatever you want, but don’t become one of them. Art is a fragile enough light as it is. It can be blown out by a single sigh. Art needs friends, with our bodies against the wind and our hands cupped around the flame until it’s strong enough to burn brightly with its own power. Until it’s an inferno. Unstoppable. — Fredrik Backman

Welcome friends! Welcome all whose hands are cupped around the fragile flames of art and hope, activism and radical self-care.

What a world. I used to love rollercoasters. Now that I’m living inside of one, I don’t feel the need to go to a theme park.

But seriously, look at all the training opportunities we’re being provided. We’re learning over and over again how to stand up for what’s right. No longer do we assume government is working in our best interest, we’ve been trained to keep a close eye on what’s going on and be ready to pick up the phone or fill in the provided form to protect libraries, public lands, schools, and (still hopeful as I write this on July 2) funding that will keep nursing homes and rural hospitals open. We know now, more than ever, that We The People are the only ones who can save this country by working together in ways that feel new and unfamiliar, but which are completely (in all the best ways) HUMAN.

It’s messy right now, but let’s make a convoy and keep going.

The image for my poem is via Unsplash.

Poetry Friday: Raccontino

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write a raccontino, a poem that tells a story starting in the title and continuing in the end words of the odd-numbered lines of couplets that contain even-line rhymes. Not at all complicated. Oh, no. Not at all.

Did you try one? Did you start with the story and the rhyme-scheme (that was my method), or did you just write from your heart and knead that dough until it fit the form?

As with any challenge, after the gnashing of the teeth and the tearing of the hair, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Then I remembered our year-long sub-challenge of writing “in conversation.” Oops.

And yet, the unwritten text of the poem is steeped in human conversation — vetting two companies before we chose one, using Google Translate to communicate with the Brazilian Portuguese-speaking crew who did all the work — as well as in figurative conversations between noise and silence, destruction and repair.

Tanita has her poem, along with this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at {fiction, instead of lies}, and the rest of the sisters’ poems are here:

Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon

Next week, on Friday, July 4, please consider joining the Inklings in writing poems of protest for our nation’s birthday. Let’s use our voices and our art to make some noise! Feel free to write in praise of democracy and patriotism if you’re so moved, or write in frustration and befuddlement over the “leadership” in the White House and/or Congress and/or the courts and/or and/or and/or. The roundup will be here!