Today I’ve gathered a list of resources in honor of National Poetry Month 2021. If you haven’t ever considered writing poetry, you will after listening to these. Inspiring!
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Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival April 2021
This year the children’s book festival was virtual. The linked title will take you to the entire list of replays for the talks, but the one that stood out to me was Word-Joy: Experience the Transformative Power of Poetry with Irene Latham , Vikram Madan, and Laura Purdie Salas.
Each author read not only from their own works, but also from the work of someone whom they admire. Then they discussed a number of practical activities to get children and adults excited about poetry.
Laura Purdie Salas discussed haiku riddles and equation poems. Check her website for much more.
Irene Latham read from her book, NINE: A Book of Nonet Poems.
A nonet is a 9-line poem that adds syllables either up or down, from one to nine syllables or from nine to one syllable. As she says, using a form like this can be freeing when it comes to writing poetry.
Vikram Madan is an artist as well as poet, so he likes to use art as an inspiration for poetry and poems as an inspiration for art.
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Writing Excuses Podcast
In their 16th season, the crew at Writing Excuses did a poetry series that really helped me understand and appreciate poetry better. Each episode comes with a writing assignment. Well worth the time investment.
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Children’s poet Marilyn Singer is a regular visitor at DIY-MFA. I couldn’t find a link to this year’s interview, but here is a recent one.
Episode 306: Recipes for Poetry and Creativity – Interview with Marilyn Singer
Do you have any favorite poetry resources from last month or any month? Feel free to leave them in the comments.
Animal Ark is an amazing combination of image and text. Full of vibrant verbs, the poems leap off the page:
