I really enjoyed the essay collection called Late Migrations (A Natural History of Love and Loss), and was working on poems as I was diving in through the book about nature and the world and personal stories (see my review of Margaret Renkl’s book). Sometimes, I write poems in the morning as a response to […]
Search Results for: sound stories
Borrowed Lines: Poems Inspired by Vesper Flights
“bird flight” by suncana is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Reading Helen MacDonald’s essays in her book Vesper Flights inspired some of my morning poetry writing the last few weeks. Here are the poems that took flight from her words of birds, animals, nature and the world … (inspired by High-Rise) Above us; insects in […]
Book Review: World of Wonders (In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments)
If beautiful words were shimmers of light, this book would be luminescent. Maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole on my part for Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s book, World of Wonders (In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments), but some of these chapters just sing with poetry and such insight, as Nezhukumatathil explores her own life […]
Songwriting: Lyrics for a Friend
My friend, John, has long had a vision of producing a country album on his bucket list. John and I play in a rock and roll band but his country project was something he always wanted to do, drawing on Hank Williams and others as inspiration for the sound he was after. So many months […]
Five Poems Walk Into a Blog
I’ve been enjoying the monthly poetry writing at Ethical ELA’s 5-Day Open Write project — mainly because it comes in five-day bursts, only once a month. A morning email update reminds me to write there. But I also appreciate it because the site is a lively writing community. There’s a lot of writing posted but […]
Book Review: The Best American Non-Required Reading (2019)
I have this hope that somewhere, there is a high school or university class that uses the annual The Best American Non-Required Reading collections for its central text. And knowing that it is a group of high school students, connected through the 826 National organization, who choose, debate and curate all of the materials in […]
Adventures in AudioStory Creation: Risking It All For the King
As my students were writing their own “Stuck Inside a Game” short stories over a few weeks time in our distance learning adventures, I was recording an audiobook of my own story: Risking It All For The King. I’d been sharing each episode as I recorded them but then gathered all SEVEN episodes in one […]
Sketch-er-ama Collaboration
I was part of a small team of strangers, becoming friends, from around the world who were taking part in World Sketchnote Day on Saturday by playing a global game of “pass the sketch.” The idea is that one person starts a sketchtnote, and passes it to the next, who adds to it and passes […]
#WriteOut: Exploring the History of the Neighborhood
Although the Write Out project (now underway for the next two weeks) is supported by the National Park Service, through a partnership with the National Writing Project, there is no mandate that you have to explore a park. Not many of us have a National Park nearby. That’s OK. Your backyard or school yard or […]
Slice of Life: Visiting the Woods of Vermont for #Writeout
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.) With the start of the Write Out project, getting outside to observe the world has been on the […]