Spring Into Poetry

'The key to teaching poetry isn't drilling the vocabulary into your students and having them practice how to recognize iambic pentameter -- the key is getting them motivated. Show them the poetry you enjoy, and explain with genuine enthusiasm why you like it. Let them see what drastically different authors have done. Teach children how to appreciate poetry, and they will understand it. Understanding will lead to their own love of poetry, and that love will carry them forward.'

Gregory Webster

With these words ringing in my ears, I intend to set myself a challenge and post a poem everyday for the month of September. It's spring in Australia, so I'm springing into verse. Ironically, the first poem I ever recall writing way back in about Grade 2 was about spring...

Today, the sun is shining...

I AM THE SUN

I am the sun

I provide warmth

Encouraging daffodils to bloom

I warm your back

And instantly you are dreaming of beach days

I am the sun

I scorch the earth until it is parched and dry

Bringing drought and famine

I force you to perspire

As my searing summer rays burn your delicate skin

I am the evaporator

I am the light

I am the sun

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Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York. I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...

Opposite Poems

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Powerful Poetry, 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston

This week, Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully @ Salt City Verse where Janice shares some original words and offers us a taste of Thomas Carlyle to ponder. I encourage you to join a host of poets from all around the globe and visit Janice's page... Almost two years to the day, I wrote a post featuring the poem 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston. The poem was included in Brian's first book of poetry, 'You Took The Last Bus Home.' A very powerful Reverso poem and technically brilliant. A Reverso poem can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. It will often express opposite opinions depending on which way you read it. Such poems really make us think. A Reverso poem is like a picture turned upside down, a frowning face upended to reveal a smiling one. The poem read in reverse, contradicts itself with an opposing message. In 'Refugee' Brian Bilston focuses on a societal issue that tends to polarize feelings and the opposing views are clearly in eviden...

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