We’re in the second week of Write Out and using time in class to be inspired for writing. Yesterday, after watching a Park Ranger Video about writing Haiku poetry, we headed outside and gather some sensory details, and then my students wrote some Haiku poems.
They are doing final versions on note-cards, which we intend to mail off to Ranger Chris at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
Peace (Short but Sweet),
Kevin
This morning’s Daily Create prompt for Write Out is all about Pocket Parks, and I wrote a poem about a bench in one of these tucked-away places.
Peace (In Parks),
Kevin
A fun Write Out activity that my students worked on the other day was to gather a leaf while writing outside, and then they created a Leaf Map — using the veins of the leaf and their imagination, they created a map of a place, with the leaf as inspiration for the artwork. Later, we will revisit the maps, and write stories based on the places of the Leaf Maps.
The Leaf Map idea came from a Park Ranger Prompt from the Capitol Reef National Park.
Peace (In All Places),
Kevin
One of our special guests for this year’s Write Out is the writer Nikki Grimes, whose new picture book with Jerry and Brian Pinkney is A Walk in The Woods. The book is a beautiful, thoughtful look at loss and remembrance, through the eyes of a young boy who has lost his father, and yet, reconnects through a walk in the woods. A discovery by the boy of poems brings the story to a new level. (And knowing that illustrator Jerry Pinkney passed away during the creation of this book, and his son, Brian, helped finish some of the artwork is an entirely other level of this story)
This picture book is a perfect fit for Write Out, which has a theme of poetry and place, and tomorrow night (Tuesday, October 17th at 7 pm EST), Nikki Grimes will join Write Out in a Zoom session to talk about her new book. See the Write Out page for events to get more information and to sign up for the Zoom session.
For my Found Poem, I borrowed a line from each sequential page in the picture book and then brought them together for a poem. The only pages I did not borrow lines from are the ones with the poems the young boy found in the woods, as I wanted to leave those as a kind of sacred text for the story.
I then composed some music, used Keynote to stitch the book image and the Found Poem together, and then in iMovie, I added my voice narration. I felt as if my voice would be important here, letting the reader listen to the lines I borrowed from Nikki Grimes’ text.
Meanwhile, after reading the book, we did our own “walks in the woods” this weekend here in New England, where Autumn is well underway.
Peace (Finding It),
Kevin
It’s the first week of Write Out and I have been using the Daily Create prompts and some Write Out inspirations each morning for some poetry writing. Here is what I have been up to.
And some prose:
Peace (in Poems),
Kevin
I was fortunate to be one of the facilitators of a deep, rich conversation about the intersections of poetry, prose and place as my Write Out colleague, Willeena Booker, and I guided a recorded conversation with the team at the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.
The park has forged interesting partnerships with regional poets, including the Alabama State Poet Laureate, to explore, interrogate and celebrate Birmingham’s history and the park has also just released a fascinating reading guide to The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963, a novel by Christopher Paul Curtis.
That conversation is being aired tonight for the first time, through the National Writing Project’s YouTube channel, and we hope to engage in a YouTube chat as the session airs for Write Out.
Please join us!
Intersections Of Poetry, Prose, and Place: A Visit with Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
October 10, 2023, 7p ET/4p PTWrite Out welcomes a poet-Ranger team of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument including Alabama State Poet Laureate Ashley Jones, Magic City Festival Earth Poet Nabila Lovelace, and Park Ranger Kat Gardiner. They will share their work with youth and other community members exploring the intersections of poetry, prose and place.
The Write Out project (Poetry, Prose and Parks!) kicks off today, and the Daily Create will be featuring creative prompts for the next two weeks (Thanks, Sarah) in connection to Write Out. This morning, it was a Window Poem, and our Mountain Ash trees have been very busy places these days.
I’ve been doing Word Art poems lately, so I might keep tinkering with the visual elements as I write for Write Out this year.
Peace (Fluttering),
Kevin
