National Poetry Day

Oct. 6th, 2017 is National Poetry Day in the UK (America celebrates Poetry Month in April so I may be back on this topic then). I don’t write poetry. You can see in this list of how-to-write-poetry tips why. In short, it requires too much thought for my brain–you have to put so much meaning into just a few words–but I follow several poets who I think are excellent. One is Audrey Dawn at Oldest Daughter and Red Headed Sister. Another, Andrew over at Andrew’s View of the Week, has these tips about writing poetry:

Sit in a quiet room and let the words come to you.
Stand in the noisy concert and let the rhythms of the music beat the words into you.
Listen to the babbling brook and write down all it says.

It’s all about the feeling
the emotion,
the image,
the metaphor.

It’s about letting your emotions run wild
and then corral them in 12 lines.

It’s about explaining rocks to apples.
It’s about comparing nails to clouds.
It’s about seeing infinity in a glass of water.

If you write poetry on a computer or would like to share it with friends, here are some great sites you might like to visit (remember: I teach K-8 so my resources tend to focus on that age group):

1. Classical Poems for Kids
2. Crocodile’s Toothache–video of a Shel Silverstein poem
3. Famous Children’s Poems
4. Favorite Poem Project
5. Glossary of Poetry Terms
6. Kids Magnetic Poetry
7. Magnetic Haiku poetry
8. Poetry Engine—writes poem for you
9. Poetry for Kids
10. Poets reading their own poetry–from the National Archives
11. Rhyming Dictionary–find words that rhyme for poetry
12. Shel Silverstein’s poetry website
13. TED: Why Poetry (video)
14. Word Mover--create poetry using pieces of existing poems

If you’re an iPad person, try these:

1. Diamante Poems
2. Acrostic Poems (iPad, Android – Free)
3. Poems by Heart From Penguin Classics (iPad – Free with in-app purchases)
4. Shakespeare’s Sonnets (iPad – fee)
5. POETRY From The Poetry Foundation (iPad, Android – Free)
6. Haiku Poem (iPad, Android – Free)
7. Word Mover app for iPad

What are you going to do to celebrate National Poetry Day?

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, and the thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and  Twenty-four Days. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.