challenge – A(nother) Year of Reading

Poetry Friday: Pantoum

The photo is the small town swimming pool where I was a lifeguard through high school and some of college, but the fancy slide wasn’t there during my time. You only get a hint of the amount of sky that was visible from up on the lifeguard stands, but if you could climb up the one just to your left that overlooks the 4′ end of the pool, you could look out across the tennis courts and I-70 to the fields and the feedlot beyond. Storms usually came in from the west (to your right), and we kept an equal eye on the swimmers and the thunderheads as they grew and darkened.

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month is to use Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound challenge from way back in January. His eight prompts were what we were supposed to use to produce eight lines with which we could create a Midyear Pantoum. I wrote one following his prompts and it was…awful. So I broke a few rules and followed others slantwise to come up with this moody summer memory.

I’m not sure which of the Poetry Sisters are in this month, but here they all are, just in case:

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

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at The Opposite of Indifference.

The Inklings are meeting In Real Life this weekend! YAY! I’ll look forward to commenting on your posts next week.

Poetry Friday: Digging…or Cutting

Catherine offered the Inklings this month’s challenge, choosing from the June challenges of Audrey Gidman:

Read “Digging” by Seamus Heaney. Think about something that has been handed down to you—from a parent, a grandparent, an elder in your life—that feels alive in you now. Think of how it is the same and think of how it has transformed in you. Notice how, for Heaney, it’s gardening and writing—two kinds of digging, but still the digging continues through the generations. Write a poem that digs into what was handed down to you and examines what you carry now.

What was handed down to me? Scissors. Fine fabric shears still in the box, pinking shears, at least four pairs of embroidery scissors of various sizes along with three pairs of antique crane scissors, two pairs of children’s safety scissors including one pair shaped like an elephant, a miniature pair of scissors, the orange-handled Fiskars I received when I began sewing, and the round-tipped baby’s fingernail scissors from her bathroom vanity drawer.

So my “digging” became cutting. Cutting away, layer by layer. Snipping, slicing, shredding, clipping.

The title for this poem came from a post by Jill Badonsky on Substack. And the (surprise to me) ending arrived when I studied a diagram of the parts of scissors.

Here are the other Inklings, who may or may not have had the bandwidth to meet this month’s challenge, what with travel and other assorted summer joys.

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

Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at More Art 4 All.

Poetry Friday: Summer Triptych

Summer Triptych – For the Teachers

Freedom is the classroom door closed and locked.
Shelves are covered with craft paper,
desk drawers are perhaps organized
or else abandoned in clutter.
It can all
wait.

II.

A black swallowtail dips
to the dill
time shifts
from calendar and clock
to caterpillar and bloom.

III.

Chicory appears
along roadsides and railroads:
blue brackets
that begin and end
this season of necessary
loosening.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2026

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to use Louise Ireland’s august triptych as our mentor poem. I studied her flow carefully. In her part one, she captured a feeling on the brink of summer’s end. In her part two, she had a concrete example from nature. And in her part three, she had another concrete example and her big lesson. I borrowed Ireland’s lead, “Freedom is…” but I wrote for all teachers, remembering well that feeling of walking away from the months of structured routines with no time for myself and into the breathing room of summer.

Next month we’ll be writing Pádraig Ó Tuama-inspired pantoums. He regularly offers a pantoum challenge on his Substack, with different prompts for each of the lines. We’re using this prompt, from January. Lots of you have written Pádraig Pantoums. We hope you’ll join us for another on the last Friday of July.

Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Two other Poetry Sisters are with us this week:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}

Poetry Friday: Ode to My Garden

I had the Inklings challenge this month: “Use a recent comment on one of your posts as a line in a poem.” Jan (Bookseedstudio) left the first two lines of this poem in the comments on my May 26 post. Her comments often sound like poems or lines from poems, so she made my job easy!

I have two kinds of peony and two kinds of foxglove. I tried to capture their personalities in my sketches. I’m having fun pairing stick-on quotes with my sketches. They provide a surprise caption.

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings (except for Margaret, who is vacationing with her family) met this month’s challenge:

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

Mona has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Mona Voelkel.

The roundup schedule filled in record time! Thanks to all who volunteered!

The Poetry Friday Roundup is HERE!

I’ve moved the picnic table into the shade of the weeping birch in the back yard of my childhood home, and the Poetry Sisters are arriving with yummy offerings for today’s pot luck.

Nope. While I DID grow up on the arid high plains of eastern Colorado, that’s WAY too dry. Let’s try again.

Right tree, wrong size of lawn. Maybe the third time will be the charm?

Close enough! Let’s get this party started!

Tricia arrives carefully balancing the dish her mom made and took to church every week for years.

Liz is bringing a family recipe as well – her grandmother’s strawberry rhubarb kuchen.

Sara, bless her, is providing the salty goodness that will balance the sweets – a lowly but always welcome bag of chips.

Tanita‘s offering is a little bit wobbly — Ms. Sandy McMahon’s red jello salad.

Laura sent some flowers for the table. She won’t be joining us with a poem this week.

More than any other season, Summer, to me, is a taste: fat green grapes at swim meets, nectarine juice running down my chin, warm cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, fresh garden green beans cooked with a ham hock and potatoes, sliced garden cucumbers tossed in vinegar and sugar, butterscotch dip cones from DQ…but what I finally chose for my poem was Three Bean Salad.*

I’m going to do the roundup “old-school” this week. Leave your link and a brief description of your post in the comments and I’ll add your links to today’s potluck.

MAIN DISHES
Susan is in with a link to Eve L. Ewing’s poem “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store” at Chicken Spaghetti.

Robyn, at Life on the Deckle Edge, is sharing a couple of new Americana bookmarks and Whitman’s classic, “I Hear America Singing.

Tabatha has an original poem today at The Opposite of Indifference.

Tracey interviews Jone about TILT! at Tangles and Tails.

Molly, at Nix the Comfort Zone, has joined the Pádraig Pantoum crew with one so delicious you’ll want to read and reread it!

SIDES
This week Jama is sharing Kim Dower’s poem “How to Shop for a Poet” with thoughts about her “ideal” poet at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

Cathy is bringing a whole carousel of offerings to the picnic at Cathy Stenquist!

Amy, at The Poem Farm, brings us this delicious side dish all the way from Utah!

Carol has left The Apples in My Orchard and is also dialing in from Utah with gorgeous photos and haikus.

Let’s serve Margaret’s Pádraig Pantoum alongside a serving of funeral potatoes from Tricia’s poem (see above.) Margaret’s pantoum is at Reflections on the Teche.

DESSERTS
Let’s put some candles on the birthday cake for Michelle at More Art 4 All! Today is her birthday and she’s written a Golden Shovel in celebration.

Jone’s sharing “her” fourth grader (in the class where she was subbing) sweet “I Am” poems at Jone Rush MacCulloch.

Carol offers up a plate of springtime thoughts, peonies before and after the rain, through nature photography, digital art, and a Golden Hinge poem at Beyond LiteracyLink.

Irene treats us to the sweetness of letter writing and snail mail at Live Your Poem. (After lunch, let’s all sit down and write a few notes!)

DRINKS
Quench your thirst for all things birds with Jan at Bookseedstudio!

Over at Reverie, Patricia is reviewing Mary Oliver/Melissa Sweet’s GOLDFINCHES, a book to sip and savor!

AFTER LUNCH ENTERTAINMENT
Jane, at Rain City Librarian, wrote about…a sea slug! A ridiculously adorable, itty bitty little sea slug that looks like a cartoon character.

Linda wrote a Pádraig Ó Tuama-ish pantoum this week. Find her on Substack at Another Word Edgewise.

Alan shares the simple, yet beguiling ‘Stornello’ -a traditonal Italian tercet – at Poetry Pizzazz.

Rose is celebrating an almost-milestone anniversary and offering a bit of entertainment with words and music at Imagine the Possibilities.

Every good picnic has at least one dog, sniffing under the table for dropped goodies. Denise, at Dare to Care, brings us and entire pack of Good Dogs in the form of études (a form to play with while our lunch settles).

Mona has a project for us after lunch is finished — let’s all go forth and put up poetry boxes! She has the details and a concrete poem at Mona Voelkel.

Here’s another after-lunch project — let’s all make poetry zines with Jill Dailey!

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

The call for roundup hosts for July – December 2026 can be found here.

All images in today’s post are via Unsplash, with the exception of the jello salad, which is Creative Commons via Flickr.

*recipe can be found in the comments

Poetry Friday: MAY!

Happy May Day! Today is an Inklings challenge day, and Heidi challenged us to “Celebrate May by writing a poem that Maykes use of the verbs may, might, could, can, ought.” It felt SO good to use more words, syllables, and lines!

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met this month’s challenge:

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

Rose has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Imagine the Possibilities.

The image is via Unsplash.

NPM 2026. The End.

All of this month’s poems can be found at Poetrepository.

It is with relief that this NPM comes to a close. I’ve learned lots about writing poetry this month. There is power in working the same form day after day. You go deep and learn it well. You start to feel it in your bones, or in my case, start to speak in three syllable chunks. Similarly, there is power in trying to put big ideas into small containers. Synonyms were my friend, I learned to work the titles, and every now and then I got a rush of joy when I stuck a landing. Brevity was both a bane and a joy. I’m definitely ready to use more words and write more actual POETRY.

I also learned lots from reading the news every day. First of all, journalists are amazing. The number and variety of stories is endless. Bad news is way more relentless than my previous glances at headlines revealed. But there is also always good news to be found. It pays to be patient because things change with about the same frequency as they erupt. When all else fails, looking out the window or walking in the garden is the perfect antidote. Even just the act of making something every day and showing up with it in public helped put the news into perspective.

Art matters.

Poetry Friday: This Week In the News and an Ekphrastic Challenge

This final Friday of National Poetry Month is also a Poetry Sisters challenge week! We’re writing ekphrastic poems, so I chose an image from today’s NYT morning newsletter. Such a different spring view from my window and from his. When will this madness end?

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:

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

Here are the rest of my poems from this week:

April 17  As If We Needed One More Example of What Narcissism Looks Like
April 18  Making Good
April 19  Primatology
April 20  Shooting Spree
April 21  A River Runs Through It
April 22  Today’s News is Outside Your Front Door

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

Poetry Friday: Another Week in the News

Today (Thursday, April 16) I needed a break from the unrelenting frazzlement of the U.S. news cycle, so I popped over to Al Jazeera for headlines from Europe. It was quite refreshing.

Here are the rest of my poems from this week:

April 10 News Fatigue

April 11 National Poetry Month

April 12 You Are a Crew

April 13 Orban Concedes Defeat

April 14 President vs. Pope

April 15 War in the Middle East

I didn’t bother linking into the roundup last week because I knew I wouldn’t be able to comment. Here’s last week’s post/poems.

Heidi has something special planned for this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe.