Tag: challenge

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The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for November was to write in the style of Valerie Worth. Attempting to narrow my focus, I went from garden, to fennel, to the ladybug larva I found in the fennel last week. Liz commented that this could be an on-going practice — choosing small and/or ordinary things and writing without the restrictions of form or rhyme. I agree. It’s quite satisfying to find the extraordinary in the ordinary that surrounds us.

I have stumbled recently both in posting regularly and in commenting generously. Please know that I am thankful for each of you and for your words! This community is one of the bright spots in my world.

Ruth has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Since it will be December next week, we need to start thinking about January-June roundups. Watch for signups.

Here’s how the other Poetry Sisters met our challenge:

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

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Linda’s challenge for the Inklings this month was

Sometimes a very narrow and constrained challenge is just right, and sometimes a wide open invitation is what a writer needs. Thanks, Linda!

Here’s how the other Inklings met Linda’s 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

Buffy Silverman has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup.

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What is a Bouts-Rimés poem? Part game, part puzzle, they are hard to get started, but once you do, the possibilities are myriad! Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Bouts-Rimés.

The Poetry Sisters shared rhymes…and then MORE rhymes when we figured out we didn’t have enough to satisfy the requirements of most sonnet types. Because our poems WOULD be sonnets. Sonnets are apparently the origin story of the Poetry Sisters, but at the beginning I was only there as audience, so I’m a late-comer to the sonnet game. Or a new-comer, as the case may be. I haven’t written many sonnets. This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, but I also tried Petrarchan and Terza Rima.

For me, the process of writing a Bouts-Rimés poem was similar to writing a golden shovel. I picked my sonnet type, then loaded the right side of my notebook page with the rhymes that fit the sonnet (for Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). I completely ignored the iambic pentameter syllable count requirement. (Call me cheater, or call me beginner. I’m fine with either label.) I chose my topic, and then started writing (and rewriting, and crossing out, and starting over). Like I said, part game, part puzzle!

Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:

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

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at The Apples in My Orchard.

Next month, we’re writing in the style of Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River. Join us if you’d like!

When I ran across the Visual Frameworks site, I immediately added it to my list of possible prompts for the Inklings. Not only are the visuals compelling, the text that follows each is thought-provoking.

My first drafts explored all the possible ways to use a framework. For Coordinates, I wrote a haiku based on the image, then an erasure poem from the text.

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But my favorite is the poem I wrote for Disrupt the Flow.

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Check out how the other Inklings met my challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Heidi (is currently on blog hiatus)
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche

Matt has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme. And there’s been a change for next week. On October 13, Catherine will be hosting at Reading to the Core.

Basil, oil, pecans, and garlic all go into the blender.
Summer is a giver, not a lender –
her heat the beginner, her pesto the ender.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

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The Poetry Sisters wrote diminishing verse poems this month. Thank goodness I got started early fiddling with drafts and studying mentor texts because the last couple of weeks have been a lot. In all good ways.

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

Jama has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

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I struggled with an image to pair with my poem. I didn’t want to activate in your imagination any particular situation. So I’m curious to know, what is this poem about…for you? Who is the “I”?

Margaret challenged the Inklings to study enjambment this month. This poem got started with the sneaky way I included in-jam-meant. Then I noticed I was writing in three-syllable lines, which sort of forced the issue of enjambment. So I cheated a little, but it was still interesting to notice which lines DO have a natural pause/stop and which lines are enjambed.

I found myself noticing enjambment as I finished the Sealey Challenge. This year, I discovered a new favorite poet, Kate Baer, thanks to the recommendation of I can’t remember which one of you. I am in AWE of the way she used enjambment in this poem:

Speaking of the Sealey Challenge, here are the books I read this past week: THE RED EAR BLOWS ITS NOSE by Robert Schechter (2 days), WHAT KIND OF WOMAN by Kate Baer, WHAT HAVE YOU LOST? ed. Naomi Shihab Nye, THE PARTING PRESENT by Manuel Iris (2 days), I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL by Kate Baer, AND YET by Kate Baer (still in progress).

Speaking of enjambment and the Inklings, here’s what the rest of the crew came up with this month:

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

Ramona has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Pleasures From the Page.

This month, the Poetry Sisters created an Exquisite Corpse poem. We wrote an original line, then chose a second line from Linda Mitchell’s clunkers. Tanita started us off, and then each poet saw only the lines written by the person before them in the process as she crafter her two lines. Only her two lines were sent to the next person. Tanita brought the process full circle with the final line of the poem. At our monthly meeting, we all typed our lines into the zoom chat, one at a time, and watched our poem unfold, amazed at how well it held together.

Sun and light, gardening and seasons weave their way throughout our lines. And any of those could be topics for poems I would write. But the poem I found within our lines is not a poem I would have written any other way. This is not my experience, not my feelings. And yet, it feels so true. I am left wondering how I can write more poems like this on my own, pushing myself out of the comfort zone of writing about the world in front of me and the feelings inside of me. A good challenge.

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month. I’m excited to see how each of them kept/modified/jumbled/reimagined our original lines:

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

Linda B. has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.

Here’s what I read this week for the Sealey Challenge: WHAT IS A FRIEND and WHAT IS A FAMILY ed. Vardell and Wong, CHAMPION CHOMPERS, SUPER STINKERS by Linda Ashman, ANIMALS IN SURPRISING SHADES by Susan J. Taylor, POETRY BY CHANCE ed. Taylor Mali, TWO TRUTHS AND A FIB ed. Bridget Magee.

Next month, the Poetry Sisters are writing Diminishing Verse poems, aka Pruning Poems. There are some mentor text poems out there if you use your favorite search engine. Here’s our best suggestion: start gathering word possibilities NOW!

The photo for this post is via Unsplash.

Pools have been a constant in my life.

What a blessing, as a child, to spend nearly every summer day at the pool! (What amazing affordable daycare the pool provided!)

I remember with vivid details every pool in every city in every phase of my life. There was even a (very brief) time when I was an open water swimmer, and I remember those two lakes, as well.

I no longer swim a mile with confident, snappy flip turns, trying to beat my own record time. I’m in the phase where the gentle whole-body movement and the controlled breathing at a leisurely pace is all I need.

What a blessing, at this end of adulthood, to still have a pool in my life! (Although you can imagine my irritation yesterday when I got to the health club and the pool was closed because the pump was down…)

The Poetry Sisters wrote monotetras this month. Lots of rules about syllables and rhymes, but fun!

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

Jan has this week’s Full-o-Links, dragonfly-hat edition BONANZA known as the Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

This sudoku poem has a striking line in the left-most column: “Grow something beautiful from what might seem like dirt.” This is a quote from page 120 of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, by poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy.

Heidi gave the Inklings the challenge of writing sudoku poems after I shared one back in June, and I originally got the idea from Rattle. As best I can tell, these poems are meant to contain ten(ish) haiku(ish) poems within the grid, five in the columns and five in the rows. They are fun to write, but take a good amount of fiddling.

Here’s what the other Inklings came up with this month:

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

Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins.