Quantcast

Poetry Activity: Tanka

April 19, 2022 by

Today’s poetry activity is to build a tanka poem.

The tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song,” and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.

Please check out this tutorial video on how to create a tanka:

If you’d like a simpler way to create one, check out the Tanka Poem Generator.

Here’s mine:

Sycamore

Oh my sycamore
It is hungry and solid.
It has perfect limbs
And a mighty roots as well
When it soars I feel happy

Share your tanka below.

Filed Under: announcements, Events, national poetry month Tagged With: , ,

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner

April 6, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 104 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner is a poetic exploration of memory and desire, but also a collection of perspectives on the body and how it is seen and what it sees. The collection opens with the poem, “I would like to be the you in someone’s poem.” Here, Meitner’s narrator expresses a desire to be seen in all her glory and quirkiness, even if it is just a fiction.

When you enter this collection, you’re in a surreal world where the poet explores what the junk mail knows about us and our finances, but also what junk mail fails to know about our feral nature and our desires to be wanted and seen with all of our flaws. Meitner’s poems offer vignettes of “multitudinous and wild pasts” and our many futures. “don’t you worry about how/scattered memory gets (pick-up-sticks, a box//of buttons, shards of plastic beached across/an entire coastline) and how we’re just trying//to find the origin,” (from “All the Past and Futures” pg. 18-9)

She tells us in “Medium Adam 25”: “I am not an abstracted/self in the wet night. I am not a static/enterprise either, and as I move through//time and space, many things are vanishing/in exchange for a wanting with no end…” Isn’t it the truth of each of us. We are not this abstract perception that others have of us; we are fluid and changing even if it isn’t as obvious by our physical selves — though those change too.

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner is intimate and existential all at once, and readers will swim in the morass and indulge in memory and perception imparted with quick wit and contemplative angst. Meitner provides us with a bridge between our memories and their changing patterns and our desires to be seen coupled with the anxiety of how we are perceived by others and ourselves.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Erika Meitner was born and raised in Queens and Long Island, New York. She attended Dartmouth College (for a BA in Creative Writing and Literature), Hebrew University on a Reynolds Scholarship, and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing as a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and her MA in Religious Studies as a Morgenstern Fellow in Jewish Studies.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, Events, national poetry month, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2022, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Poetry Activity: Texting Poems

April 5, 2022 by

I love to share fun and inspiring poetry creation activities, and one of my favorites is still to come. But as I was checking around for new activities, I came across one for students that I think writers might enjoy trying.

We all know how to text each other on our phones at this point, so how about we create a text poem in the form of couplets.

  • Couplets: two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit

For this writing exercise, you can choose something conversational you would have with a friend and write just 2 lines with the same meter (usually we speak in Iambic pentameter) and a rhyme.

There’s also this Rhyming Couplet Generator, though it is a bit more formal.

We can start a conversation in the comments if you’re up for it.

Here’s my attempt:

I walked at dawn in the orange glow.
My boots crunched on icy snow.

Something very simple for your Tuesday!

Filed Under: Events, national poetry month Tagged With: , , ,

Local D.C. Event: Gallery Opening of Photopoetry by Gordana Gerskovic, Serena Agusto-Cox, and More

April 3, 2022 by

What: Opening Reception of Photopoetry
When: Sunday, April 3 at 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: Foundry Gallery at 2118 8th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Two of my poems have been paired with Gordana Gerskovic‘s wonderful art. I hope that if you are in the area, you’ll drop by the opening reception on April 3.

Also featured:

We will host a reading later in the month.

Filed Under: announcements, Events, national poetry month Tagged With: , , ,

Virtual Poetry Circle: Nikki Giovanni

April 2, 2022 by

 

Hello everyone! It’s National Poetry Month and in honor of Women’s History Month in March, I wanted to share one of my favorite Nikki Giovanni poems.




Legacies

her grandmother called her from the playground   
       “yes, ma’am”
       “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old   
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less   
dependent on her spirit so
she said
       “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
       these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does

I love how the exchange here between the older woman and the girl is simple. It is a normal conversation between an elder looking to teach a child and a child’s response, but there is that undercurrent of fear and connection that I love so much about this poem.

The child wants to stay connected to this woman, but knows that death is nearing for her and she hopes that by rejecting the teaching, she can stave off that inevitable moment and disconnection.

What are some of your favorite poems celebrating women?

Filed Under: Events, national poetry month, virtual poetry circle Tagged With: ,

National Poetry Month 2022

April 1, 2022 by

This is the 2022 winner of The Academy of American Poets poster contest. Lara L. is an eleventh grader from Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, New York.

As always, poetry is coming this month on the blog. I am eager to share poetic events and some poetry with everyone.

I’ll be at the Foundry Gallery on April 3 for an opening reception for photographs from Gordana Geršković and poems created by myself and other local poets. Our poetry reading will be on April 24.

On April 23, I’ll be participating in a National Poetry Month celebration through an online virtual reading. More details to come.

On May 1, I’ll be at Tunnicliff’s Tavern reading with other Poets on the Patio for Literary Hill BookFest.

I’d love to hear what you have planned to celebrate poetry this month.
Add your links or comments below:

Filed Under: Events, national poetry month Tagged With: