I’ve been working a few days on this digital piece, that merges an original piece of music I created with a poem, and then complimentary video. Overall, I’m happy with the results.
Happy new year!
Peace (falling and catching),
Kevin
Category Archives: Poetry
Snow Day Poem Day
25. What a view! A six-inch snowfall! flickr photo by Carol (vanhookc) shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
We got the no-school call early yesterday morning as a storm rolled in …. so a poem about the superstitions/techniques that kids still use the night before the possible winter storms …
Spoons
under pillows
Prayers
to the skies
Pajamas
on backwards
Flush a toilet
full of iceDon’t ask us
how these things
make what you
wish to become true –just keep on sleeping in –
Today’s
a Snow Day
for you
Peace (play),
Kevin
Book Review: Typewriter Rodeo (Real People, Real Stories, Custom Poems)
Oh my gosh. This whole concept just gets me thinking and dreaming of poetry. I wrote a poem nearly every morning (I do it over here) but these talented folks set up with typewriters and write for hours, as people come up and ask for a poem on a suggested topic. The poems are just marvelous and what’s missing with the book is the sound of the typewriters in action (there should be an audio file on the cover that you can push to listen as you read.)
Here’s a video of four hours of typewriting ..
Anyhoo … Typewriter Rodeo, the book, seeks to capture the experience of Typewriter Rodeo, the experience, where the four poets — Jodi Egerton, David Fruchter, Kari Anne Holt and Sean Petrie — set up at festivals, Maker Spaces, bars and restaurants, and special events, and write poemspoemspoemspoems for people, sometimes for hours. It seems like magic. (Special thanks to my friend, Mary Lee, for turning me on to Typewriter Rodeo)
The book collection here — Typewriter Rodeo: Real People, Real Stories, Custom Poems — is full of the poems written on the fly with little more than a word or phrase, and quick connection between poet and audience — or at least, the ones they have remembered to take a picture of before the poem leaves in the hands of the requester. The four writers tell stories of their experiences as poets-on-demand (“The mistakes are free” is one of my favorite mantras of theirs), and some of the poem recipients also share stories. In fact, what emerges is how many people are surprised at how deep the poetry goes, capturing their emotions and thinking in a way that no other writing-from-a-stranger can probably do.
The result is this beautiful, crazy collection of poems — heart-felt, deeply emotional, funny and insightful, and it makes me want to set up a typewriter on the neighborhood corner and write on request, as if I could pull that off. (Hey, maybe I could! You could, too!)
Peace (poems bring it on),
Kevin
Two SmallPoems about the Clocks
IMG_1697 flickr photo by jmerelo shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
With the end of Daylight Savings, my brain — already a tricky object at night — is fairly confused, and that makes for some interesting poems, I guess.
Yesterday’s Poem:
Oh,
hour,
lost hour,
you gentle flower –
hidden
in the shadows
of bloom –
we forgot
you were there
until you
reappeared
at the door
of dawn’s
empty room
Today’s Poem:
My brain
won’t believe
what the clock
seems to sayI’m open-eyed
and wide awake
with hours before
the day
Peace (tick tock goes the clock),
Kevin
Curating a Collection of Place-Based SmallPoems
Every morning, in October, I used the daily place-based theme of the day for CLMOOC and Write Out to both write poetry (at home, before work) and doodle (at school, with kids). While I was posting the small poems at my poetry site, I wanted to find a way to gather them together, to curate them, with the calendar that Wendy had built for us in CLMOOC with every theme listed.
ThingLink did the trick. Hover over a day, and click the green button to read the poem.
I had the idea of adding an audio version of each poem to the days, but never got to it. Yet. I might still do that, since it is easy enough to upload audio into each tagged item in ThingLink.
Also, here is my complete calendar of daily doodles from the classroom — there’s no real correlation between my doodles on the themes and the poems on the themes, other than both were inspired each day by the same theme.
Peace (day by day, poem by poem, doodle by doodle),
Kevin
Poems With Strangers and Friends: The #WriteOut #SmallPoems eBook
We had nearly 30 small poems written and shared in our open Google Slides for the Write Out project. I gathered up the files and used SoundSlides to create a short video of this wonderful collection of words and images and collaboration.
Go directly to SoundSlides to watch
or
Go to the Slideshow to read at your own pace (but without music!)
Peace (in the poems),
Kevi
The #WriteOut Audio Collaboration: 25+ Voices in a Poem
After a week or so of asking (cajoling, sometimes) folks to record lines and stanzas from the collaborative Where We’re From poem (with lines submitted by more than 100 people during the first part of the Write Out project), the last track was delivered, put into place, and the collaboration … is complete.
There were 25 people who submitted voices (well, technically more, since Kim D. had her entire class of young students reading) and recording tracks to this collaborative poem, which runs nearly 13 minutes long. That’s a bit to listen to, but the effect is what we had hoped for — a quilted collage of many voices reading a poem written by many people, about place and home and family and more.
When we talk about connected learning ideas and collaboration, we hope that this kind of project is something that can inspire us to create together, to make together, to publish together. Sure, there are problems — some of the audio files sound different because of the myriad of apps and microphones. We did our best to level things out, but there’s plenty of rough spots.
That gives the audio poem charm, though. People are different, and our voices are different, and the audio collage reflects that in meaningful ways. If you participated in any aspect of this — from writing lines, which were dispersed and gathered in themes of stanzas and sections to recording assigned parts — thank you.
Peace (sounds like the world writing),
Kevin
We’re Writing Small Poems for #WriteOut … You’re Invited, too
For Write Out, we’re inviting you to add a haiku or any other small poem to a collaborative slideshow now underway. It’s simple — just grab a slide from the Google Slides, write a small poem, and add an image to go with your poems. The more, the merrier.
Peace (small but powerful),
Kevin
Where We’re From: 100+ Writers Add Lines to #WriteOut Collaboration
When we asked if people might contribute to a poem based on George Ella Lyon’s Where I’m From and inspired by Kwame Alexander’s crowd-sourced version for National Public Radio, we didn’t know if anyone would answer the call. Well, they sure did. We had more than 100 contributors to a collective, collaborative poem that spans more than 8 pages of writing.
Wow.
We are now in the process of getting more than 30 volunteers to read stanzas from the poem, which we intend/hope to weave together to create an audio mosaic of voice for the poem itself.
Peace (is where we’re from),
Kevin
The Mess I’m Making (is the Poem I’m Writing)
I was writing and rewriting this poem during some quiet writing time in the classroom the other day. Not sure the framing of the poem works, but the mess of the page is how I often write (although when I write with keyboard and screen, all that notation and revision becomes rather invisible).
Peace (poems),
Kevin