.
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.
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:
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
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
April 11 Identity
April 12 Promote
April 13 Female
April 14 Belong
April 15 Minority
April 16 Activism
Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Jone Rush MacCulloch.
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.
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.
It’s time again for the Poetry Sisters’ Challenge! Here’s the scoop, via Tanita’s blog: “We’re writing back to four Lucille Clifton poems, in her notes to clark kent series: “if i should;” “further note to clark;” “final note to clark;” and “note passed to superman.” We’ll be ‘in conversation’ with Ms. Lucille’s poems – talking to them, talking back to them, or talking about them, whether that’s all of them, or any of them, either in form or in substance.”
I got really really REALLY stuck on this one. Exactly nothing useful showed up in my notebook during our 25 minute work session on Zoom last Sunday. But the magic of a shower to wash away the chlorine from my swim also unlocked the idea box. I think these responses work without reading Lucille’s poems, but just in case, take a minute to read what she said to Clark before you read what Clark wrote back.
(all four Clark Kent Writes Back poems (c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025)
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins.
I wrote a post last week about a random Wordle Poem rule I made up for myself. Sometimes I write a Wordle poem using my word choices, but I ALWAYS write a haiku (a Wordle-ku) if I get the answer in three guesses. (I rarely get the answer in three.)
I made up a new rule yesterday. If I get the answer in five, I will write a limerick. Or, as the case may be, a Wordle-imerick. (I often get the answer in five. Maybe this should be a suggestion, rather than a rule…)
3/12 party, laugh, mange, manga, mango
The party was held in Durango.
For a laugh, we danced a wild tango.
So wild we caught mange,
wrote a manga quite strange,
then went to the store for a mango.
(I didn’t say they’d always make sense. But I did get better.)
3/13 chair, champ, chalk, chase (yes, I broke the rule and used a four-word win)
There once was a child in a chair.
Said child had some gum in his hair.
He wasn’t a champ.
Chalk him up as a scamp
chased down with a threat and a glare.
3/19 glory, stare, shark, snark, spark
The ocean — a vast blue-green glory.
I stare at its unfolding story.
The fin of a shark,
and its sharp toothy snark
spark panic before beaches get gory.
They’re slightly addictive, but I’ll stop there. I have two more recent solved-it-in-fives that I’ll Wordle-imerick (it’s also a verb) safely out of sight in my notebook.
Rose has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Imagine the Possibilities. (Love that blog title!)
I used to start each Wordle game with the same word (adieu) to check for vowels. I also used to care deeply about my streak. Dialing back the time I spend on my phone, mostly thanks to the hellscape known as the news, has cured me of the need to Wordle every single day.
I’ve also learned from Molly the joy of starting every day with a different word, a set-the-tone word, or a hopeful word, or a just plain random word. Last Friday, I opened the blind on the east window in my office, the one to the right of my desk, and was greeted with yet another gorgeous sunrise.
First try: OPENS, and I get the P yellow and the E green. Hmm…let’s try P as the first letter and a blend…PL would work. Then the E, and let’s check another vowel…PLEA…can’t be please, that’s too long. How about PLEAD?
Whelp, the P is correct as the first letter, and I still have E in the middle spot. What other vowels could I use? PIE…what starts with PIE? I know the Wordle puzzle makers often like to try to trick us with two of the same letter, so what starts with PIE and ends with E? PIECE?
YES! I got it in three. I don’t always write a Wordle poem, but if I solve it in three tries, a haiku is mandatory.
battered heart opens
pleads for a brief respite
piece of joy arrives
(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025
The email from The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) told me “Get Ready For National Poetry Month!”
They read my mind. I’ve been auditioning ideas for the past several days:
Revisit favorite poetry books from my classroom collection before I donate them? (No, I’d rather get the books in the hands of young readers BEFORE April begins.)
Wordle poems? (No, too unpredictable and often too goofy or trivial.)
Response to the news? (No. Just…no. No matter how important it is to witness the horrors, this would be way too depressing.)
Nature poems inspired by Mary Oliver’s “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”? (That I could do.)
Devote the month to a form? (I’ve done haiku, cheritas, and golden shovels. This is a definite possibility. Maybe acrostics. Then I could respond to the news, AND “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.” with or without a nature theme. Let’s give it a try…)
Yesterday, I had my yearly eye checkup, complete with the near-blindness of the drops that dilate your pupils.
DILATED
Devil’s in the details.
Ideally, anyway. But
Leave it to the Big Picture
Archetype to force us to
Try to see everything all at once
Even when we hardly
Dare to open our eyes.
(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft
Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.
A(nother) Year of Reading 