my juicy little universe

GloPoWriMo Day 21 - place names

2026-04-22T07:36:00.002-04:00

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a middle grade book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree drafts this month.

APR 21 In her poem, Names and Nicknames, Monika Kumar reminisces over various nicknames she has been given, the actual name her mother gave her, and the way both names and nicknames indicate a claim and an intimacy at once. In your poem for today, we challenge you to write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place.

https://www.napowrimo.net/

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Place Names

The Bamboo Forest, of course–that’s what it is. But other places have more mysterious names: Grape Jelly Tunnel,

Bailey’s Honeysuckle Fence,

The Easter Sunrise Dogwoods,

Nurse Billyfoot’s Bush.

There are others who know one or two of the names, but only I know them all,

labeled on the map of my mind.

My Weeping Curtain Room.

If we should find ourselves meeting more than once in the same place, a place we mark

by its tree or bush, by our tongues or noses, by the time of day or the mood we bring,

we’ll name it together:

The Meeting Maple or

Bushwhacker’s Wood,

Beech Beach or

The Golden Carpet.

draft ©HM 2026

GloPoWriMo Day 20 - front yard dogwood

2026-04-20T09:23:00.002-04:00

APR 20

You may not realize it at first, but the poem "Black Swan on Water" by Carl Phillips is a single sentence! The three-line stanzas mimic the “braids in water” in the penultimate line, and the way the lines get longer and longer also makes the poem as a whole look a bit like the widening wake that a swan leaves as it swims. For today, try writing your own poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.

_____________________________________________

Front Yard Dogwood

I know

it’s growing

but I can’t see it,

watching this dogwood

in the yard every year since

third grade–it’s still too little

to climb, and I can still reach to

hang from the lowest branch; it

bends and the notched pink flowers shift

to face me, smelling like my own skin after

a bath, and I wonder How does it feel for you, this

growing with no one to mark it on the wall of the air?

draft ©HM 2026

npm poetry friday: ✒️"WE TEACH POETRY" - video conversation with Jone Rush MacCulloch, Margaret Simon & me

2026-04-16T18:00:00.055-04:00

Welcome one and all to the 3rd Friday of National Poetry Month! I'm glad to have this opportunity to host you all and will be diving into all your tasty posts later Friday afternoon (once I return from MY tasty activity, which is bringing an intro to poetry to the 2nd grade Alpacas and Okapis at a local two-way Spanish immersion school).

"Cherry Blossoms" by Amir

The main event here today is what I hope you'll consider a special treat: a lively recorded conversation in which fellow Teaching Poets Jone and Margaret talk extensively with me about a topic dear to our hearts and yours: poetry with and for kids! We'll discuss:

1) approaches to the teaching of poetry with elementary-aged kids

2) why it's important!

3) and how writing with kids inspires and sustains us, three middle-aging white ladies. 🌞

The video is edited down to about 33 minutes, which is still rawther long--so you should feel free to watch it at 1.5x speed or even 2x if you need to! We decided to take out the middle chunk where we rhapsodize over certain books and poets we turn to again and again in our work, but you can see a list of our recommended resources below, and some highlights from the transcript.

Now, dim the lights, grab bucket of popcorn as light as falling cherry blossoms, and enjoy the show!

All three of us hope that you enjoy hearing a little bit about the charmed work that we do, and that you too get inspiration and sustenance from your poetry involvements, with or without groups of children!

And now for your contributions!

____________________________________________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT (edited for clarity--boy are we all prone to a bunch of verbal ticciness!)

Heidi:

Welcome, welcome, my friends, to this casual conversation! We teach poetry, the three of us, and I thought it would be really great to have some folks who are very specifically engaged in teaching poetry in different settings to have a little chat about how it goes for us and why we think it's important, and what we achieve and for our our students, the the kids that we work with, and for ourselves in doing the work that we do. So I'll introduce myself first. I'm Heidi Mordhorst. I was a classroom teacher in many different settings for 37 years, and then I had the great gift of an opportunity to change gears, leave full-time classroom teaching and establish WHISPERshout Writing Workshop. It's now a 501c3 with the mission of Poetry and Justice for All....and I work with kids who are generally 4 to 12, mainly 5 to 11, elementary school age. How about you, Margaret?

Margaret:

Hi, I'm Margaret Simon. And I was teaching for 38 years until I retired in May of 25 and found an opportunity that has just been a godsend through our Acadiana Center for the Arts. It's called the Teaching Artist program, and I get to go into schools and do the best part of teaching. I like to tell them, I get to come in and have fun, and I don't have to grade their papers or call their parents for any reason. So it's just a joy. I get to go into the classrooms, and, you know, get passionate about poetry and it's just a joy. I've really enjoyed this new gig of mine!

Jone:

I'm Jone Rush MacCulloch, and I retired eight years ago after 44 years, mostly in the school library, and I now am substituting, and I also love to bring in poetry and art. When I go to the classrooms, most of the teachers ask me, “Would you like me to leave you some time for poetry and art?” And I always say yes, and it's one of the best things that I get to do with my retired time.

Heidi:

Well, thank you for joining me. We're going to address a few different questions, and the first one is, What works in teaching poetry to kids? What are your favorite approaches for working with specific ages and stages of students?

I’ll toss something out:

I did not make this up–I actually heard someone* say this in a Poetry Foundation workshop that I went to in Chicago one July–and when I heard this simple sentence, I didn't really even need to hear the rest of the workshop because it made immediate sense to me…You can say to kids who, very typically, go to the art room for their art special each week, “Who likes to do art? Well, poetry is just artwork made of words.” And I was like, “THAT is genius.” And that is how I begin with the youngest students (and even with the oldest students at the right level), and I usually bring in an artwork that I've made, a collage, and we talk about how it was made, and what the tools and materials are that I use and the choices that I made as an artist to make the artwork, the visual art–-and then I show them my “real” artwork, the thing that I feel most passionate about, and they're like, “Where is it? What is it?” The little ones aren't sure, right? And the older ones know that it's made of words, but they… have never necessarily thought of a poem as an artwork. And that really changes the conversation about what we're doing in a classroom with this kind of literature that sits on the boundary between art and and literacy and creativity and self expression and breaking the rules and following the rules. So that's one of my go-to approaches, is to treat poetry writing like making an artwork of any other kind.

Heidi, I want to thank you for that, because this is a new gig for me, and… I'm always curious about, okay, how do I best approach these kids who really don't experience poetry every day, and they don't really….you know, I usually start with “What is a poem?” and try to elicit responses that way. But I love the way you do that. So I might have to change it up. I did borrow what you say to the kids about being the boss. “You are the boss of your poem.”

Heidi:

And we’re going to come back around to that, I think, when we talk about why poetry is important! How about you, Jone?

Jone:

I like to sometimes start with a poem that I really, really like. And I always feel that if I'm really enthusiastic about the poem, kids are going to be and, you know, I think over the years, they just know that when I come in, they're going to get poetry, you know, because one of the things about subbing is I might teach them in kindergarten, and I’m probably going to bring in that art piece now with kinders, but I will see them again in first grade and second grade, and we'll talk about, you know, that time that we got to do poetry, and I am pretty firm about really trying to tie in the art to the visual to go along with the poem all the time.

Margaret:

I would like to know–well, because I have pretty strong feelings about this–what makes poetry important? We seem to be rare breeds, those of us who come into the classrooms teaching poetry, and I can't help but be really disappointed when I ask the question, “What is a poem?” and really get very little in response. It hasn't been, for most of the kids I work with, it hasn't been a part of their learning at all. And they they have a sketch of what they think it is, a little inkling, you know, “Oh, it's written in stanzas.” And sometimes they just say it's rhyme, and, you know, I have to correct them. It's not always rhyme, but you know, I just feel sadness when I see kids have not been exposed to poetry, because I feel like the importance–I mean poetry to me, gives students and me a way to express ourselves that is unique. And like you said, Heidi, about that art piece, it is a piece of art and a piece of art in words. And, you know, yesterday, a teacher was kind of trying to be flippant with me and with the students. She was saying, “Well, you know, watch out, because so and so, you know, she’s going to be grading this.” And I looked at her, and I went, “No, no, no, no, I don't, we don't ever grade poetry.” And she said, “Oh, I didn't mean it, you know.” But it's like, no, this is creative expression. It is not anything to be graded….So why is it important?

Jone:

I think it gives kids a sense of who they are. I think they I think there's a lot of joy they when they see that they have written a poem, and I know when I share on the blogs, when I publish their poems and go back and get to share they are just so–it builds that confidence. And I think one of the things that I love about teaching poetry is it's such a short [form], it isn't lengthy, you don't have to worry about paragraphs. And for some of those kids, where they're very resistant to writing, they can see that they can put something together that is kind of a low risk. You know, just last week, I was working with a school where they had a family literacy night, and they asked me to do a poetry room, and I decided to set up three stations. I had a really low-risk of “Come and read a poetry book with your your child,” and I put out some of the the anthologies that I've been published in, in a couple of my favorite go-to poetry books. Then the more medium-risk was these poetry cubes with phrases on them that they could just use the phrases and create basically a found poem. Or they could go off of it, and then the higher-risk was the haiku cubes, because you have to really sit down and and then you just have the best time. And I just think it gives them a sense of accomplishment. You know, even the ones that, when I have a kid that is resistant in writing, I will scribe for them. I don't care if they tell me–”Okay, so tell me what you're thinking. You know, let me write this down”.

Heidi:

That’s because you can compose a poem, even if you can't write a poem, right?

Jone:

Right, right?! And I've shared those on on Poetry Friday. You know, there's been some hilarious poems because they "don't want to" write poetry, and they say “I'm not a poet,” and yet they are!

Heidi:

Most kids are, and especially younger kids. And I always say, poetry is important for a few different reasons, and I'm going to echo some of what you've both said and add something in. So it IS the perfect genre for beginners, right? Because it is short, you can say something meaningful and powerful in just a few words, and it's a “legitimate” piece of writing, even if you don't know all the conventions of punctuation. Because, and I always say this, “Kids, what I love most about poetry is that you make up your own rules, right?” And it's good to be introduced to the rules of certain forms. But often the way it's taught in school is, “Here is a cinquain, here is a [nother form]—” and kids get the idea that it's a recipe that you follow, rather than being told what Margaret mentioned, that You Are the Boss of Your Poem. I am giving you all the input I can, lots of creative opportunities. We always make the art before we write, because while you're making the art, while you're acting out the story, you're cogitating, you're generating material for what it is you're about to write. So that provides something to hang your poem on. But no matter what I offer you, if you don't want to write about the thing that is the theme of the workshop, you don't have to, because the whole idea is that You are the Boss of Your Poem. And I think that this is also connected to the other reason that it's easy to shy away from doing poetry in the classroom, and that's because when you invite children to express themselves, THEY DO. And then you're the teacher in the room sitting with information, perhaps, or emotions or a view of a kid that you don't feel prepared, necessarily, to cope with. You have a ton of things on your plate. And I know, you know, we all know, having been in classrooms and libraries for all those years, there's ever more that you are responsible for, and the idea that you would also encounter the inside of a kid that you haven't met before in your classroom, because you've asked them to write, and you've said, “Write something that's meaningful and important to you,” is really scary. And I know that there are a lot of folks who, in addition to being maybe a little shy about encountering poetry themselves (like, what does it mean, and how do I decide what it means?), are also reluctant to offer kids the opportunity to really be themselves on paper…and they handle that sometimes by saying, “Here's the rubric, and your poem has to have seven lines, and your poem has to count the syllables, and you have to…” Whereas I always feel like I have been most successful as a poetry teacher, as a teaching artist, when no child's poem is anything like any other child's poem, because that means that I gave them that confidence you mentioned, Jone, that sense that “my voice matters,” and that's why I chose Poetry And Justice For All as my mission statement. Because there is justice buried in the ability of all kids to use their voices, to find their voices and use them powerfully. And if they're writing a funny poem that makes people laugh, that's just as powerful–and could turn into something really great down the road–as writing a really heartfelt nature appreciation poem, which is the thing that, in general, we much prefer to see come out in the classroom.

Or, you know, we might just see the raw truth of a kid's life. And I had to ask a kid the other day, she wrote something about “knives in my eyes, and I cry and I don't stop, and I don't stop. I don't stop until I cry.” And I was like, “Hmm, let me ask this little girl a question: are you seeing something you don't want to see?” Because I was curious about why she would say that she'd stab knives in her eyes. And she said, “No, that's the feeling of my anger.” And I said, “How about we help people understand what this poem is about, and you could use Anger as your title, right?” So that people understand that there's not some….sensitive situation of possibly being exposed to content that she didn't really want to see. And really it was just her own intense feeling of anger, you know, at her brother, right? Like “the only thing I can think of to relieve this is [stabbing knives into my eyes.] Dramatic kid, great poem! So that all is why I think poetry is important, because it gives kids agency if you offer it, if you let them have it, and you have to be prepared as the teacher to [deal with it].

I have said to kids--you've probably had this experience too--“That is an outstanding poem. It is, however, not school appropriate. So I want to tell you all the things that are good about this poem and why most people would not think it's okay to read this at our poetry party. But I want you to know it's a great poem, and I'm so glad you wrote it.”

Jone:

Yeah. I mean, I've had to remind a couple kids that we are going to be family friendly, you know. And I mean, when, especially when you, you know, one of the things I love to do, and it kind of leads into you were saying approaches, you know, word banks and and creating Word banks, and sometimes the word is a great word, not sure it's family-friendly, friends.

Heidi

Yeah, but boy, it's really great for rhyming!

But I did want to ask, how different do you do? You is what you do with much younger kids, and, for example, Margaret, the middle schoolers that you've been working with, and I think even some high school groups, right?

Margaret:

I have really run the gamut this year, and it's been challenging to me, because I am accustomed to the elementary group, and also I've been accustomed to gifted kids who kind of come in pretty ripe for writing, you know, they, they, they've got a lot of, you know, metaphorical thinking already and that kind of thing going on. And so now I'm going into regular classrooms with all all different, the full range, the full the full range, right? And so I have to kind of let go of some of my high expectations of what they might already know how to do. And and it's fine. It's fine. You know, we create a safe space within that time that we're together and and I always incorporate art. So, you know, I'm not teaching them how to draw. I'm not that kind of teaching artist. But we always include art. So when, when that kind of, you know, gives away in, it's a little safer space, you know, then and anyway, it has been. It has been kind of an interesting journey. But I've really enjoyed it. And some of the things that the kids have come back with have been just amazing. And when they create something that is kind of amazing, they feel it, they know it, you know, yeah. And I like those little miracles that, yay.

Heidi:

But also, have you seen this, too? Where one or two kids write something that's outside the sort of middle path, and everybody can feel that it's special, and they get inspired by their peer, and they want to go and try something else, and they want to take a little more risk. They want to, you know, say something truer, say something in a different way. And I love when that happens, (you know, it happens with all kinds of things, “6-7” just careened through every classroom in the entire internet world.) And, it would be really great if poetry, poetry recitation, did that too. But you can see that that happening in classrooms, you know, a little contagion of of poetic risk.

Margaret:

One thing I did this week that was different, that I really was pleased with how it turned out, because I kind of hesitate to actually pick up another student's poem and read it. But with these middle schoolers, they were so like, “I don't want to read this,” you know, right? Read it out loud. And I said, “Okay, well, would you mind if I read it out loud?” And then I turned on the performer me, you know, in reading aloud their poem, and, I mean you could just feel the pride happen in the room because someone else was reading their poem, but I was reading it with with such vigor,

Jone:

Sometimes offering to read for somebody really changes the tone of the room and gives–they go “Oh!”--especially when they hear the the feedback from other students that's really positive.

Heidi:

I talk about how I'm gonna share from poems---"Now I'm not gonna say who the poet is. If it's your poem and you want to claim it and say, I wrote that publicly, you can, and then maybe you'll come and read it, you know, with me." But I think you're right. It's so important to let them hear how their poem sounds with kind of a sensitive, dramatic, experienced performance voice, right? But I read them--I don't really ask permission, because I'm not revealing who it is. And I say, “What I love about this poem is this and this and this and this is really cool, and you might like to try this. Let's give that poet a clap. And so without ever revealing who it was, eventually everybody knows whose poem is whose, but it's a way of letting older kids not expose themselves and yet have their work honored and appreciated, and you know, the examples of peers being shared.

Margaret:

Fabulous. I ask them if I can take a picture of it, yeah. And I tell them, I say that I'm a blogger, and I'll take a picture of it, and I'll say that I'm going to, you know, I'm going to publish this. So I think, Jone, you do that too, right? You publish there.

Jone:

Yes, yes. And it was last week I subbed in the second grade classroom that I've been in several times now this year, and we did the animal sound poems, which is one of my go-tos, and they just all wanted to read. They can't wait! “Can we read our poems. Can we?” Yes, you can– I love that.

Margaret:

I think, Jone, I'm gonna steal that! As a teaching artist, you have to create your workshops that you're gonna post on the website. So I think I'm gonna put that up as one for next year, and I think it will go really well with my new baby board book that is about the sounds of birds. I mean, it's full of onomatopoeia. So we can just make onomatopoeia poems!

Jone:

One of the things I've been doing with been playing around with the word bank is because, you know, I provide a lot of scaffolding for their poetry to start. But instead of asking them, well, colors for the animals, I have started using “the color of,” and in the fourth grade class that I was in a couple weeks ago. I said, “Okay, if something is brown, how can we say it's brown without saying it's brown?” And then you're not saying, Oh, now we're going to write a metaphor, you know? No, you just [make the comparison]. I'm going in to fourth grade tomorrow, and I'm going to try it also with “So give me some moves. It moves like what?And I think it's such a great AHA for me. Like, “Oh, this is so much better than tell me how it moves,” you know.

Margaret:

So, yeah, that's a great idea! Thank you.

[Jone then starts us off on our wild free-for-all of books we love to use; see the very bottom of the post!]

Heidi:

Here’s a big, big, important question: How does creating with young poets sustain and inspire YOU?

Jone:

I am constantly looking at how to revise lessons what I mean. They just provide the energy. They see things in a different way than I would have ever seen it. I love when they don't follow the rules…I think I'm going to talk about this a little bit in the blog for tomorrow (April 3). So in the animal poems, I have them to kind of talk about rhythm. You know, the animal sounds, repeat the animal sounds. And I had a student, and I said, you know, you can play with it, it doesn't have to be the same three sound sounds, you can, you can play with them. And they had them going like, ME–OW, MEO–W. And I just thought, this is brilliant, you know, I would have never thought of that, you know, just to indicate how you should be saying it and it should be different. Or they would switch the words and I thought, this is what I love. I love seeing how their little minds work, and their BIG minds!

Heidi:

All they need is permission.

Margaret:

Yep, yeah. And one of the things that Sandy Lyne said–he was a mentor of mine; he's since passed away–but he would say that the best poets are the ones who give themselves the most permission. And I've always remembered that. And I think being with kids, and writing poems alongside them, and watching them respond and and really be very proud of what they've accomplished, is sustaining. I mean, it's what I'm here for, and it's really the best part of of teaching for me. And I'm just happy I get to still do it, you know? And I don't have to write an IEP so that I can justify it, right? Yeah, or a lesson plan*, and I'm not really competing with any other teachers or anything. I mean it's really the best of the of the teaching world. In fact, I go into classrooms and the teachers themselves are just going, “Oh, I wish I could retire and teach poetry all the time.”

*Of course Margaret means that we all write careful lesson plans for our poetry teaching; but not for a whole day of everything!

Heidi:

I think most of us [teachers] have something that we feel especially passionate about. But you know, the inspiration and the sustenance are kind of the same for me. I'm wearing my little watering can earrings [for a reason], and I've also spoken about myself as a midwife to poems, and I feel like the job is to make way for kids to find their voice and then use it powerfully, as powerfully as possible. And if I'm teaching some technique about how to do that along the way, that's great, but really it's: “I see you, you are important. What you have to say is important.” And then they do! And that is inspiring to me because, like you said, Jone, I get so many ideas–back when I could remember verbatim what kids said in the classroom, I would go home and write poems about them. (My brain will not do that for me anymore.) So I get inspired by the things that kids say, what they write, how they see the world, but also it is a reminder every day of why we would bother to save the world! It's for them. They are the inspiration. You know, I'm getting relief from the outside world by being in the moment with kids, and then also, I'm getting reminded why it's important to pay attention to the outside world. And that is a combination which, in addition to just the joy of what they come up with and getting to do what I want without a lot of the stuff that I don't want, it makes my current job the best job I've ever had.

Jone & Margaret:

Yeah, hear, hear! Yes, it is!

Heidi

We're so lucky! Look at us three [aging] lucky white ladies. (laughter)

Jone:

Yes, it is a privilege. I'll tell you that I feel that more and more every day–to bring joy into the world. I hope to always be bringing joy, because there's not enough of it in the world,

Heidi:

And I do think it keeps us young.

All of us:

I agree. I would totally agree. Thank you!

__________________________________________________

Book List (by no means exhaustive, but these are the ones mentioned in our discussion. Let us know if you would like to join the next conversation, where we all just talk about books we use and how!)

Boom, Bellow, Bleat by Georgia Heard
Winter Bees by Joyce Sidman
How To Write A Poem by Kwame Alexander
I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes
Laughing Tomatoes; From The Belly Button Of The Moon; Angels on Bicycles;
Iguanas In The Snow, all by Francisco X Alarcon
All The Small Poems by Valerie Worth
Lion Of The Sky and ____ Can Be books by Laura Purdie Salas
Dictionary For A Better World by Irene Latham And Charles Waters
when the world is puddle-wonderful by E.E. Cummings
Seeing Into Tomorrow by Richard Wright
“I Am From” by George Ella Lyon
I Can Move The Sea, collected by Gillian Clark
Salting The Ocean collected by Naomi Shihab Nye
Ten-Second Rain Showers, collected by Sanford Lyne
Poetry Friday Anthologies - Pomelo Books

What Is A Friend?
Hop To It
Poetry Friday Anthology For Science

The Dirigible Balloon - children’s poetry website

GloPoWriMo Day 13 - the bamboo forest

2026-04-13T07:22:00.004-04:00

APR 13

First read Walter de la Mare’s poem “A Song of Enchantment.” Then, John Berryman’s poem “Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood.” Both poems work very differently, yet leave you with a sense of the near-fantastical possibilities of the landscapes they describe. Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.

__________________________________________

the bamboo forest

the vertical green, notched and jointed, and the damp fug of summer,

bladed leaves that we know the pandas eat– should we maybe too try,

as a way to bite through this tight tropical hidden no-one’s land unlike

woods of any have we seen here in the four-season midatlantic? poles

receding upward into air, yellowing prison bars wearing flags of sky &

never have I, always the shortest in the class, never have I been shorter,

yet here tower I through eyes raised, longering limbs lingering amid

the dim whine of bugs and the gong of alone, a little hollowed & lost in

the bamboo forest–if you too are here, we’ll only know by the reverent

calling of our names.

draft ©HM 2026

GloPoWriMo Day 11 - as tree has [man]

2026-04-12T10:02:00.005-04:00

APR 11

Write your own erasure/blackout poem. You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you. It can be especially fun to play with a book you don’t know, particularly one that deals with an unfamiliar topic.

I used this handy tool I found at Tricia Stohr-Hunt's April daily poem project and it presented me with--rather perfectly--a text from "Accepting the Universe" by John Burroughs As you'll see, I disagree!

https://fouuund.it/blackout/

"I do not see that Nature is any more solicitous about the well-being of man than she is, say, about the well-being of trees. She is solicitous about the well-being of all life, so far as the conditions of life favor its development and continuance — men and trees alike. But all have to run the gantlet of some form of hostile forces — the trees one kind, man another. What I mean is that evil in some form waits upon all hindrances, accidents, defeat, failure, death. The trees and the forests have their enemies and accidents and setbacks, and men and communities of men have analogous evils. Trees are attacked by worms, blight, tornadoes, lightning, and men are attacked by pestilence, famine, wars, and all manner of diseases. Every tree struggles to stand upright; it is the easiest and only normal position. Men aspire to uprightness of thought and conduct, but a thousand accidental conditions prevent most of them from attaining it. One tree in falling is likely to bring down, or to mutilate, other trees, as the moral or business downfall of a strong man in a community is quite sure to bring evil to many others around him. Trees struggle with one another for moisture and sustenance from the soil, and for a place in the sun, as men do in the community, and the luckiest, or the most fit, survive. Nature plans for a perfect tree as she plans for a perfect man, but both tree and man have to take their chances with hostile forces and conditions amid which their lot falls, so that an absolutely perfect oak or elm or pine is about as rare as a perfect man. Nature has endowed man with mental and spiritual powers which she has not bestowed upon trees."

Here's my redacted version, with a lot of manliness marked so we don't forget there are more than one kind of hu[man]!

As tree has [man]

Do not see any more
[man] than trees.
All favor, all form, forces all:
trees and [men] analogous.
all manner stand upright;
one tree to other trees as
a strong community.
With moisture and sustenance,
a place in the sun, do
most survive—a perfect plan
for both tree and [man].
So absolutely oak or elm or pine,
as [man], has powers bestowed.

draft ©HM 2026

One more day to catch up!

GloPoWriMo Day 10 - goodbye

2026-04-11T06:19:00.004-04:00

APR 10

In his poem, “Goodbye,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.

_________________________________

Goodbye

Some things I can’t come back to. Your trunk is gone, your stump is all that’s left. If I hadn’t known you whole, your stump would be enough.

How did this happen? With noise and careless sawdust in the air? How did this happen? Like a murder meditated in the night?

Your stump still speaks for you. And I can bring all five senses, let my own trunk and both hands topple in a pile of life on your ringed plinth.

draft ©HM 2026

GloPoWriMo Day 9 - encyclical from the cardinal

2026-04-11T05:53:00.010-04:00

APR 9

Marianne Moore wrote on many themes… many poems about – or in the voice of – animals, such as “The Fish,” “Dock Rats,” “The Pangolin,” and “No Swan so Fine.” Today, try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts.

This one is not at all in the style of Marianne Moore--I'll come back to that--and it's not springy, but my book will be all seasons, so here it is, a pantoum.

_______________________________________

Encyclical from the Cardinal

I rebel, my red against the gray:

All winter I surprise your eye again

While the planet’s ills around you weigh

While the air is chill and branches bare

All winter I surprise your eye again

My mate and I remind you, flashing cheer

While the air is chill and branches bare

We swoop and wing our joy: another day!

My mate and I remind you, calling cheer

However dread the news, my red rebels

We swoop and wing our joy: another day!

We do not leave; we weather it, we stay

However dread the news, my red rebels

While the planet’s ills around you weigh

We do not leave; we weather it, we stay

I remain the red against the gray.

GloPoWriMo Day 8 + poetry friday - not a being

2026-04-10T07:23:00.012-04:00

Happy 2nd Friday of National Poetry Month! I'm plugging away at a little project using the daily prompts from the folks at NaPoWriMo. I'm aiming my drafts at a middle grade book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree drafts this month. I'm loving the wide variety of poets featured, especially the international names we don't see otherwise!

APR 8 (and yes, I'm a little behind! Watch this space...) In his poem, “Poet, No Thanks,” Jean D’Amérique repeats the phrase “I wasn’t a poet” multiple

times, while describing other things that he instead claims to have been. In your poem for today,

use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.

____________________________________

not a being

“It’s not a plant”

too tall too gray too black

too rough too hard too solid

we don’t have to water it

it stands by the curb like a sign---

that’s not a plant

except for how it roots and drinks

how it grows from the soil

how it absorbs sunlight–sunlight!--from the air

how its billion built-in factories make

green sugar for the planet

a sign of life

“It’s not a person”

no eyes no ears no mouth

no lungs no heart no moving muscle

it can't communicate

it stands in one place in silence---

that’s not a person

except for how it sees and hears

how it breathes and beats its blood of sap

how it trades messages–messages!--through the soil
how it sends and receives information

through the wood wild web of

fungal threads

it’s okay

you didn’t know

draft ©HM 2026

_________________________________________

APR 9

APR 10

_________________________________________

Our host today is Jone Rush MacCulloch, who greets us today with a gorgeous, looping, linking ars poetica. And of course, the Progressive Poem has been progressing (so sorry that I have been missing it all week; just a few dozen things going on here) -- catch up today as I will with Line 10 from Janet Fagal!

I got excited by Donna's addition of place names and had to join in...my version of the map here:

April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone MacCulloch at Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet
April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails

GloPoWriMo Day 7 - counting-in rhyme

2026-04-07T08:01:00.004-04:00

APR 7 In her poem, “Front Yard Rhyme,” Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to.

https://www.napowrimo.net/

Tree Rounds

one tree, two tree, three tree, four

follow the path that starts at your door

beech tree, maple tree, willow tree, oak

pedal your bike, spin your spokes

magnolia, laburnum, tulip, yew

leaf, twig, branch, trunk, rumpled roots

find something, take something, acorn, nut

give something, anything–you’ll know what

draft ©HM 2026

GloPoWriMo Day 6 - a conversation

2026-04-06T07:48:00.008-04:00

APR 6

In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream, after Yentl van Stokkum's It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe.”

On the day this tree tells me its name it's not a dream

We know each other quite well now–we first met when I fell off the bus one afternoon, scraped my knee, waited for the bus to pull away and then limped over to sit and lean against it, throbbing with embarrassment.

–I think only the bus driver noticed–said the tree, a towering southern magnolia.

--You think?--I said, catching a sob.

--Actually I know. It’s one of the powers of the Grandiflora.--

I had to know about the powers of this magnolia tree, I asked a dozen questions but not its name. I though it was called simply Grandiflora, that all similar trees shared this name, so a year later as I was using its untrimmed lower branches to hoist myself into the cool of its leathery leafcladding, I was surprised when it asked my name.

–What’s your name? You visit often but you’ve never introduced yourself.--

–I like to be called Sylvie,– I answered–but that’s not my real name. Is Grandiflora your real name?--

–My real name is Cerolia, and I’m not an it. I’m a we.--

–A “we”?--

–Most trees call themselves we. It’s the royal We, certainly, but also the plural we:

many branches, many leaves, many seeds, many offspring. You humans could be we too.--

–I see what you mean,-- I said, –so we are called Sylvie and you-plural are called Cerolia.--

–We are pleased to finally know your name, Sylvie.--

And Cerolia shook their waxy green, rust-lined leaves around us like laughing.

GloPoWriMo Day 4 - front porch

2026-04-04T06:51:00.006-04:00

APR 4

In his poem, “Spring Thunder,” Mark van Doren brings us a short, haunting evocation of weather and the change in seasons. Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.

Front Porch

Early warm and dark,

every bird in the world cries hark,

only me here

to see full moon set near, just

behind oak, beyond clouds;

the nectar is loud–

redbud and dogwood,

bees before dawn,

pink and green cream,

spring stretches and yawns.

draft ©HM 2026

national poetry month 2026 - why are we here? what are we about?

2026-04-03T06:48:00.008-04:00

Greetings to all who pass here on this Poetry Friday! (Orientation at this link.)

On this ball of confusion that is the human world, Nature persists in doing her dependable gorgeous thing, offering us all the reasons we need to do our dependable gorgeous thing as poets. What, you may ask, is that thing, exactly?

Today you will receive answers! Not one definitive answer, but many possible answers, as Linda has offered the Inklings critique group this challenge for the first Friday in April (borrowing from the Poetry Foundation): "Write an...

Ars Poetica
A poem that explains the “art of poetry,” or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem. Horace’s Ars Poetica is an early example, and the foundation for the tradition. While Horace writes of the importance of delighting and instructing audiences, many modernist ars poetica poets argue that poems should be written for their own sake, as art for the sake of art. Archibald MacLeish’s famous “Ars Poetica” sums up the argument: “A poem should not mean / But be.” (Poetry Foundation)

I thought of writing a new piece for this challenge, but knew that I had several already drafted to choose from (who among us has not contemplated the point of it all?), so I trawled my catalog and chose one to revise and update. Plus I'm sharing a bonus type of one for kids that was published long ago in Sylvia Vardell's Booklinks column! In both cases, I'm not about telling you what a poem SHOULD do, like Archibald MacLeish, but more about suggesting what a poet is TRYING to do, what a poem COULD do, COULD mean. In the first I imagine poets as engineers of a kind, as magicians, as day laborers, as movers.

In this one, poets are bakers, potters, cooks.

If I had to use fewer words, though, I'd just defer to our glorious, mysterious dead friend Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant---

And now, here are links to my fellow Inklings' blogs, so you can see what they think the art of the poem is, and let's go and see what's brewing with the Progressive Poem, too! Thanks to Tabatha and Cathy; catch up here at Patricia's blog.

Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Tech e

Thanks to our host for today, Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme, who's celebrating a shiny year for A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS! I'm delighted to say that I'll take my turn to host on April 17, with highlights from a conversation called "We Teach Poetry" that I held yesterday with Jone Rush MacCulloch and Margaret Simon. We entertained and educated each other greatly on Zoom, and I'm really looking forward to sharing some of our favorite approaches to teaching poetry to kids, why we think it's important in the first place, and how writing with kids sustains and inspires us. Don't miss it!

Finally, an extra bonus bonus: I found this poem at Jama's Alphabet Soup, featured back in 2021. What a fantastic ars poetica by a British poetry star, Carol Ann Duffy! (And it's a very British poem indeed.)

THE WORDS OF POEMS by Carol Ann Duffy

GloPoWriMo 3 - vocation

2026-04-03T06:28:00.003-04:00

APR 3
In his poem, “Treasure Hunt,” Prabodh Parikh brings us a refreshingly different view of what being a poet is like – that is, if you grew up on the cultural notion of poets being wan and ethereal, or ill and doomed. Parikh’s boisterous pirate of a poet might be an “unreliable” character, but seems like he’d be the life of any party, and quite satisfied with his existence. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon, or a farmer that hates vegetables. Or maybe you have a poetical alter-ego of your own, who flies a non-wan, treasure-hunting flag with pride.
https://www.napowrimo.net/

************

People think I’m just a kid tooling around on my bike on my way to the pool
or the library. They have trouble imagining the truth: I am not playing, I’m
working. This is my calling, my profession. Visiting each tree, observing, noting,
drawing, composing, watching through the seasons, learning some botany. I’m
inexperienced but I’m serious.

draft ©HM 2026

“HALF OF THEM DON’T EVEN HAVE A PROFESSION,” Harriet, who considers espionage her calling, writes of her sixth-grade cohort. When her mother accuses her of “playing” with her notebook, Harriet snaps, “Who says I’m playing? I’m WORKING!” Mrs. Welsch tries to clarify that schoolwork, not spying, is Harriet’s work.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-tragic-misfit-behind-harriet-the-spy

GloPoWriMo Day 2 - after Ellen Bryant Voigt

2026-04-02T13:14:00.005-04:00

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree poems this month. Prompt #2:

In her poem, “Pittsylvania County,” Ellen Bryant Voigt recounts watching her father and brother play catch with sensory detail and a strangely foreboding sense of inevitability. The speaker watches the scene, but is outside of it – cut off. She’s not so much jealous of the interaction between her father and brother, as filled with a pervading sense that she wants something more or different from life than what the moment seems to presage. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

what am I after?

it’s a kingdom–

no, a queendom–

no, I don’t want to be a monarch or even a painted lady; I’m more like a cabbage white,

nondescript but striking in its way, with the flipsy lilting power to make my own way from plant to plant, from tree to tree, and notice how I fly by solitary, I don’t consult, I leave and go, I come back and my wings become just two of many hands, ears, lashed eyes, lunged tongues flapping at the dinner table and I belong there, and also out here alone between the trees,

sovereign.

draft ©HM 2026

P.S. It's my first time participating in Glo/NaPoWriMo and I have just discovered that it's a very grass-rootsy kind of thing hosted by a lil' old poet called Maureen Thorson (actually I don't think she's very old) and I'm grateful.

GloPoWriMo Day 1 - tree tanka

2026-04-01T08:56:00.057-04:00

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

(and one of my last posts here on Blogger...I'm moving over to Substack this April)

This year I'm leaning into the Global version of National Poetry Writing Month, in the spirit of international connection and cooperation between what we are increasingly encouraged to think of as Us and Them (but of course we're all pink on the inside). I'm particularly going to be searching out poets of the UK and Ireland, in preparation for joining that community starting in September when my spouse and I will relocate for the academic year to Brighton, in order to be closer to her family. The poets.org poster for this year seems to know something of our efforts to pull a sword from that particular geographic stone! (I have a variety of feelings about this image, by the way; I wonder what you make of this typography, color choices, featured character, references, etc etc?)

tree tanka

like lampposts standing

in a snowy wood, each tree

lights a different verge

of my realm: a starting point,

a green-edged destination

draft ©HM 2026

And I'm off!

becoming

2026-03-06T07:42:00.009-05:00

Greeting. (typo but hee hee apparently I only have time today for a single greeting)

This week is becoming a little less frantic as the weekend approaches, but at this very moment...it's still frantic. Hence, a very light swing at the March challenge set for the Inklings by Margaret:

"Taking inspiration from this poem posted for Jacqueline Woodson’s birthday https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58421/on-paper, write a poem (any form or free verse) using the word becoming."

And even that I couldn't quite manage!

Become

to be

come knocking

to be
come in

to be
come closer

come on now

come clean

to be

come as you are

come a come a

come as chameleon

come out, come out

whoever you are

to be

come out of the blue

come out of your shell

come out in the wash

to be

come quietly

come in small packages

to be

come to grief

come rain or come shine

come hell or high water

to be

come out of left field

come out swinging

come at me

to be

come to your senses

come to a head

to be

come back from the brink

come to a conclusion

come home

become

draft (c) HM 2026

What I want to know is, did Jacqueline Woodson know this poem from SING A SONG OF POPCORN (1988), or is this becoming yourself through writing a universal, expressible in myriad ways?

Thanks to our hostess today, Karen Edmisten, who graces us with an original poem (a treat rarer than I for one would like!). SPRING FORWARD with hope, fortitude and longanimity, everyone!

it's no one's (and everyone's) fault

2026-02-27T12:12:00.005-05:00

Greetings all--late post to offer more detail on the Fault Line poem form that Mary Lee used in her Poetry Sisters/Arthur Sze poem today. Over in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Project, a prompt about "What Lies Beneath?" the reminded me of a poem I wrote 2020 that kind of created itself. I don't think it exists as a known, named form (although it's similar to some you all know), so I'm trying to define it. Here's my working description:

A fault line poem contains a hidden line running beneath its surface — not in the first letters like an acrostic, or in end-words like a golden shovel, but in the fractures between words. The hidden line is built from edges rubbing together across rifts: the ending of one word, the beginning of another, or both combined. Whole words of the “landscape” poem may also be used. The result should be a smaller poem buried in the landscape poem, like a geological fault hidden beneath stable ground. Perhaps stepping close to it creates a vertiginous feeling of risk, or revelation.

The hidden line can be marked typographically (bold, italics, small caps) for those who want to show the fault line clearly as in my poem below, or left entirely concealed.

The reveal of the fault line at the end, like the haiku that ends a haibun, invites the reader to reconsider the formerly stable ground they were standing on from a new perspective.

To construct one: Begin with the line you want to hide---or don’t, and let the two intertwined pieces develop simultaneously! Either way, you’ll build the poem outward from it, choosing words whose edges, pressed together, yield the words of your hidden text in sequence. The poem must stand on its own — the fault line should be barely visible until the reader falls into it.

I'm posting the original fault line, called "Elves Chasm, Grand Canyon," and then another that I wrote, much shorter.

On the Edge

Show me another gray day

and I’ll surrender, start scanning the

cold, wet landscape for a way out.

I’ll climb a bridge and stand, swaying,

trying to judge how many feet I’d fall, if I’d

hit hard enough. Who can take any more

of this gnawing, windy winter?

How can we stand

any more winter?

Thanks to Margaret for hosting today--I won't get around to much commenting this weekend, but I thought I oughta share!

somewhere waiting

2026-02-19T21:03:00.003-05:00

So many of us are grateful to Susan Thomsen (and OG Poetry Fridayer) for inviting us to participate with her in responding to a poetry prompt mentioned by David Lehman in his intro to The Best American Poetry 2025: to write a short poem starting with the final line of Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:

“I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

She's hosting today at Chicken Spaghetti and I have this to share--looking forward to all the stoppings, all the somewheres!

I stop somewhere waiting for you

It’s unclear where I've stopped
or who you’ll be, but I’m ready to settle
here, in a pool of shade or a beam of sun,
with you.

It’s hard to know how it will happen.

You may emerge from a dressing room,
turning before the mirror in a new striped sweater,
dragging your eyes across mine, deliberate.

Or I may rush from my park bench to chase
you with the glove you just dropped.

You may stand just before me in line
to buy popcorn for the movie, the movie
we’re both seeing alone.

Or I may step into a repurposed phone booth
and dial 0, and you’ll be the stranger who picks up
in some faraway city.

I stop here, somewhere, waiting for you,
waiting to fall in love with someone

I’ve never met.

draft ©HM 2026

what if

2026-02-13T08:20:00.001-05:00

Greetings, Poetry People. It's the third Friday of the month and thus Climate Friday here at mjlu. I think I need to write a love poem for February, a love poem to possibility, a love poem to the planet. It's kind of a poet's First Job, isn't it? And you can say that planet poems are a dime a dozen, but that doesn't make the practice or the product any less valuable, now does it? I don't think so, at least.

The Medicine

What if the thermometer itself froze solid
and the people linked arms and sang in solidarity with the cold?

What if the mercury crossed the endline of 32*
and the crowd of birds and squirrels went wild cheering the runoff?

What if the far-north ice patches receded,
revealing the darts of forebears who shopped at the caribou market?

What if snow fell "quietly, quietly, leaving nothing out,"
and we each found our one job and did it thoroughly, faithfully?

What if the sun shone, ceaselessly dependable,
and to a person we built a photovoltaic prayer for the future?

What if indoors the gullible daffodils bloomed
and outdoors the bulbs underground kept counting the sunrise?

What if the currents of the wind changed,
and we packed our carpet bags, put up our umbrellas and sailed

to our next appointment, where once again
through elbow grease and a spoonful of sugar we reconnected
all the members of the earthly family?

Instadraft (c) HM 2026

Greeting also to the ever-artful Robyn Hood Black, who is HERE for us in so many ways, topmost as our roundup host today. Thanks, Robyn, and to you and any others who may not know them, check out

HERE: Poems for the Planet (an anthology) and

YOU ARE HERE: Poetry in the Natural World (Ada Limon's Laureate project)

brief and to the gentle point

2026-02-06T06:56:00.005-05:00

Merry February, everyone. There are lots of ways of giving advice: in the form of a command, by demonstration, through constant nagging or subtle suggestion, precisely with details, broadly with general encouragement. For this month's Inklings Challenge, Molly (also our host today!) offered us a prompt she found among those at Audrey Gidman's December Poetry Advent Calendar. It reads:

Write a poem after Wendell Berry’s “Like Snow” — word for word. Choose a subject: rain, a butterfly, granite, the ocean, anything. Berry’s poem is three lines long. Break down each line. In line one, replace the word “suppose” with something else: what if; in spite of; imagine etc., replace the pronoun and the verb, replace “snow” with your chosen subject. Do the same with the second and third lines. Be sure to write an epigraph that reads “after Wendell Berry."

To that Molly added advice in the form of permissions: "I'm not sure if this is easy or not, but it is short! I'd also add that you can just be inspired by this poem and not go word for word in your substitution. Or go rogue and feel free to interpret the prompt in any way that you want! Write about snow! Get inspired by another Wendell Berry poem! Or even choose a totally different prompt from the list."

And then, interestingly, Berry's poem is a kind of advisement, quite gentle; musing, even; a conjecture:

LIKE SNOW

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.

—Wendell Berry from “Leavings,” (Counterpoint, 2009)

What if indeed we did our one job, just that thoroughly, humbly, and then...were done with it? How might that change things? I found it a soothing challenge to transform Wendell's nugget of wisdom into something of my own.

Like Progress

after Wendell Berry

Suppose we flowed forward
like the path, curvingly, curvingly,
leaving straight lines by the wayside.

draft ©HM 2026

What if indeed our progress is not fighting but flowing, is not a road but a path, is not straight and smooth but curved and not always clearly visible, and requires us to leave some of our driving behind? (Oh yeah: longanimity.) Sometimes you write the poem you yourself need without realizing it until ten days later. Also, didn't someone once say that "the personal is political"?

Furthermore, on the topics of snow and advice, here's a poem from this time last year, before I knew of Wendell's poem....

Many thank to Molly for her choice of prompt, and for hosting us today! Check out the takes of all the Inklings below.
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Tech e

unearthing the good news

2026-01-16T09:52:00.002-05:00

Greetings, Poetry People. 2026 is what you might call a Challenging Year so far, and some of the worst headlines are getting buried under other terrible headlines (that also require our attention. Watch this to understand again how Renee became a "legitimate target" and steel yourself for what we--specifically 99% of us--have to give up to make change).

But I'm actually here on this Friday, traditionally Climate Friday at mjlu, to make sure that I dig up some good news for you during the week when the Administration of Greed & Destruction is doing their worst for the environment. Let's clap back at the following headlines:

"Trump Withdraws U.S. from Major Global Climate Agreements
On January 7, 2026, the Trump administration released a memo. It ordered the country to pull out of 66 international organizations. This includes key climate bodies like the UNFCCC (a multinational treaty) and the IPCC (the UN scientific group that reviews climate research).

“I (Pres. Trump) have considered the Secretary of State’s report and, after deliberating with my Cabinet, have determined that it is contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to the organizations listed in section 2 of this memorandum.”"

"Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet
By pulling the United States out of the main international climate treaty, seizing Venezuelan crude oil and using government power to resuscitate the domestic coal industry while choking off clean energy, the Trump administration is not just ignoring climate change, it is likely making the problem worse."

"U.S. carbon pollution rose last year. Experts blame a cold winter, natural gas prices and data centers.
Whereas U.S. emissions fell in prior years, the country spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, according to new research."

So what could there possibly be to hang on to, to celebrate? Try these nuggets:

"Over a quarter of all vehicle sales around the world are now EVs!
“Plug-in cars have been comprising more than half of all sales in China and just under a third in Europe in recent months. EVs have had a sales share of more than 20% in recent months in Turkey, Thailand, and Vietnam...If you think the EV revolution is losing speed, it’s probably just a sign that your own domestic market is getting left behind.”
EVs aren’t a perfect solution, of course...However, EVs today are already much, much better than fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. Unless every watt of power you use to charge the EV comes from coal, EVs produce much lower emissions and require far less mining for resources than regular internal combustion engines. And the more the grid decarbonizes, the greater the benefits."

"5 of Our Top Legal Wins From 2025 - EARTHJUSTICE

The onslaught of environmental attacks from polluting industries and their allies in the Trump administration is not slowing down – but neither is the pace of our litigation.
1. Protecting Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument
5. Protecting the Gulf of Mexico from Offshore Drilling
*Bonus Win: In Settlement of Greenwashing Lawsuit, Tyson Agrees to Stop Making Climate Claims"

"Offshore wind developer prevails in U.S. court
A federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as President Trump seeks to shut it down."

It's not easy to find sources of good climate news, but I'll repeat and add to some of my go-to sources:

What If We Get It Right? with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson https://ayanaelizabeth.substack.com/
Talking Climate with Katharine Hayhoe https://www.talkingclimate.ca/
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/
https://one5c.com/ for practical tips and encouragement

And then I came across this, for those of us suffering debilitating climate (or other "public") grief:

“Unthinkable resource hub.”
"From Unthinkable, a “nonprofit tackling the mental health crisis within the climate crisis,” this rich library of resources offers – among many other things – personalized help for individuals who want to move through distress into focused action."

And now, the poetry part of our program today: the Poets.org Treehouse Climate Poem Prizewinner for 2025.

A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem
Rachel Dillon

but in this poem nothing dies.

Alone in the poem, I make myself
brave. No—I show brave
to my body, take both to the ocean.

Come hurricane, come rip current,
come toxic algal bloom.

In March, I drift past the estuary
to watch an eight-foot dolphin
lap the Mill River

like a cat pacing a bathtub,
sick and disoriented.

Biologists will unspool her empty intestines,
weigh her gray cerebellum.
She swam a great distance to die

alone. I’m sorry—I lied. I can’t control
what lives or dies. I need a place

to stow my brain. To hold
each moment close as a sand flea
caught in my knuckle hairs.

Please, someone—
tell me a poem can coax

oil from a sea bird’s throat.
Tell me what to do
with my hands—my hands—

what can my hands do now?

Thanks to our host Jan at bookseed studio for bringing us all the inspiring MLKJr goodness today, and

make sure you walk out of somewhere into the shared light of action at 2pm on Tuesday.

hovering into 2026: a winged color goddess

2026-01-03T07:05:00.003-05:00

Have I ever been here before? Realizing on Saturday morning that on Friday I morning I had not given one inkling of thought to the fact that it was Poetry Friday, the first one of the new month? The New Year?

I'll go and look, but ... I don't think so. And I haven't posted since the first Friday of November, and I haven't really written a n y t h i n g since Dec. 3, and (all join in) THAT'S OKAY. But it is odd that all of this has happened without intent, giving me a strong feeling of flakiness. (I once wrote a poem about the horror of being a flaky person, which came out like this,* so some part of me knows better.)

The thing is, while all of you were busily linking your Poetry Friday post with our hostess with the mostess Catherine, I WAS in fact thinking my first OLW thoughts in years, looking for the word that will hold me during this transitional time as Fiona and I gear up to start, in late August, spending 9 months of every year in England, returning each summer to Silver Spring. More on the word later.

First up is the Inklings challenge, set by said hostess Catherine, and based on a little poem by further Inkling Mary Lee (who also rounded us all up and has provided the list of hosts and code to feed the HTML dragons--thank you, Mary Lee, for helping us run). We are to write a little poem that begins “This is January” or “January.” I especially enjoyed the first line of her follow-up to the poem she posted on December 12: "This is December, as much or more than ..."

So...

This is January
This is January, as much or more than
cleaning up the confetti, putting away the decorations,
assessing the year gone by, prognosticating the year to come:

the pleasurable stillness of waking, for once,
as the low, slow sun is already slatting the wall;
of taking up a book instead of a handful of screed and screen;
of scrambled eggs in bed and a moderate walk in the wind.

May nothing trying cross my door, on this first of January at least.
draft (c) HM 2026

And now, my word for 2026: l o n g a n i m i t y

"Longanimity is a word with a long history. It came to English in the 15th century from the Late Latin adjective longanimis, meaning "patient" or "long-suffering." Longanimis, in turn, derives from the Latin combination of longus ("long") and animus ("soul"). Longus is related to English's long and is itself an ancestor to several other English words, including longevity ("long life"), elongate ("to make longer"), and prolong ("to lengthen in time"). Now used somewhat infrequently in English, longanimity stresses the character of one who, like the figure of Job in the Bible, endures prolonged suffering with extreme patience."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/longanimity

Now, to be clear, my personal trials are nothing compared with Job's, but do I tend to cause myself quite a lot of internal suffering? Why, yes--yes I do. So I have chosen this word over "patience" (a thing I already know that I do not excel in) and over something more like "optimism" or "faith," because it's a quirky word that is fun to say, and because it reminds me that my soul and I am playing a long game, that if I can hang back a little and see what develops, rather than anxiously leaning in and attempting to execute items from my many lists before their time, things are likely to work out fine. It makes me feel wiser than I am wont to feel.

Thanks to Catherine for the challenge, to Mary Lee again for the starting point and our community's bonne continuation, and to all of you for being here, rain or shine. Read what they and my pals Margaret, Linda and Molly have wrought here, and be well!

Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

*******BONUS POEM*******

*Goddess Lesson #1

Let’s fantasize,

which is not the same thing as plan.

Plan means picture it through,

time it out, write it down,

commit. And you know what that means:

follow through. Get it done.

Flaking is not an option.

Being flaky is the worst possible thing:

it suggests that you are

not in control

of the situation. It suggests that

you are living in some fantasy

where the plan is not pictured,

not timed, not written down, where

things just happen of their own accord,

one thing leading to another in

some kind of natural, easy flow that

does not require your constant efforting

and which results in all kinds of

serendipity,

moments where you see as you

had not seen before, things are created,

colors sprout wings and name themselves

after the goddesses of every civilization;

they swarm around you, lifting you,

carrying you so lightly that neither are you

burdened nor are you a burden–

Instead you are a beautiful

luminescent flake

of snow, of buttery pastry, of ash or

of skin that has done its duty of its own

accord and floats, drifting on the natural,

easy breath of a fantastic

winged color goddess

poem of a dress

2025-12-05T07:29:00.003-05:00

Greetings, Poetry People, and welcome to this aggressively-arriving December! I don't celebrate Advent in the traditional sense, but I'm very aware of it all the same. When the first Sunday of Advent is also the first DAY of December a person can feel a little rushed, and when the first week of December brings freeze and snow (unusual for these parts) a person could feel a little chilly, too. Not to mention the similarly aggressive DARKNESS.

Luckily we have poetry to keep things warm and bright, and this month I offered the Inklings a simple challenge: "Address an item of your clothing."

Once upon a time in 2019 I was at NCTE, striding the halls of the Baltimore Convention Center, and a woman passed before me wearing an item of clothing that I literally had to reach out and grab. (I hope it was more of a reach-out-and-unaggressively-tap-her-shoulder, but I was very excited so I can't be sure.)

In my hurry I skipped the civil preambles of "Excuse me" and went straight to "Where did you get that DRESS?" She overlooked my abruptness because she was also a teacher in a hurry; she told me where (and this post is sponsored in spirit by woman-owned internet merchant Svaha); I arrived at my NCTE session and immediately ordered it using my phone.

And so began a lengthy love story. I wore this dress for the umpteenth time just yesterday while teaching an ekphrastic poetry workshop to 150 6th graders, and I was wearing it in November when I wrote poems of address, advice and apology with 5th graders...which of course made we want to write a Poem of A Dress. THIS dress!--although my version is a slightly different style.

Hee hee. Incidentally, this poem owes some of its vocabulary and figures to the 5th graders of Mrs. Twigg's Class, who helped me workshop it when Mrs. Twigg and I critiqued each other's poems by way of demonstrating a response protocol for sharing poems with a partner. (Mrs. Twigg's poem was also great fun, full of hand-and-heartwarming "Brewed Wisdom" for the barista in all of us.)

As you can see, though, this dress is not well-suited for warmer, more colorful months, in my opinion, so in March I ordered a second writerly Svaha dress, with a design called "Botanical Library." I wore it for the first time on April 22 to a protest at the Supreme Courth about opting out of LGBTQ+ books in my district's classrooms--the perfect symbolic combination for Earth Day and Representation in Books!

I wonder what items of clothing our other Inkling friends will address? Check them out below, and thanks to our distinctly UNaggressive host Irene at Live Your Poem for rounding us up today!

Catherine @Readin g to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

tastes like...happy

2025-11-06T20:17:00.003-05:00

November already?! Oof. Time for another Inklings challenge, thanks to Linda Mitchell. "The prompt comes from Ethical ELA’s September 2025 Open Write by Kelsey Bigelow: “What is the happiest thing you’ve ever tasted?

I'm smack in the middle of my first-ever travel residency AND my laptop spectacularly crashed and burned halfway through yesterday, so I have to skip some of the recommended rambling freewrite and go for the InstaDraftTM...

Who's a Boss?

(dedicated to the 5th graders of Williamsport ES)

You are choosing words that make

the poem sound good to our ears
and feel good in our mouths.

I see you over there whispering your words to yourself,
before you write them down, as you write them down,
after you write them down. I hear you testing, trying,
timid or torrential; your rhymes are raggedy, your similes
leave us smiling; your fifth-grade flavor is farm-fresh &

aura-matic! and nothing tastes happier to my weary ears

than you reading your poem

out loud in the middle of a

random Thursday afternoon.

Thanks to LPS for hosting us today with a little anticipatory Flurrying, Floating and Flying!

Finally--do speak up if you'll be at NCTE! I'm moderating a panel on nonfiction poetry with Marilyn Singer, Carole Weatherford, Carol Hinz and our own Margaret Simon. I wouldn't want to miss hanging out with any of you!

not very spooky at all

2025-10-31T07:46:00.005-04:00

welcome to PreK and your first pumpkin carving

Happy Halloween to all #saints #haints #souls #ancestors #wanderers #neighbors #refugees

A Theory of Halloween,

or why my pumpkins are always smiling

#halloween #poem #poetrycommunity #pagan #history #samhain

my juicy little universe

GloPoWriMo Day 21 - place names

GloPoWriMo Day 20 - front yard dogwood

npm poetry friday: ✒️"WE TEACH POETRY" - video conversation with Jone Rush MacCulloch, Margaret Simon & me

GloPoWriMo Day 13 - the bamboo forest

GloPoWriMo Day 11 - as tree has [man]

https://fouuund.it/blackout/

GloPoWriMo Day 10 - goodbye

GloPoWriMo Day 9 - encyclical from the cardinal

GloPoWriMo Day 8 + poetry friday - not a being

GloPoWriMo Day 7 - counting-in rhyme

GloPoWriMo Day 6 - a conversation

GloPoWriMo Day 4 - front porch

national poetry month 2026 - why are we here? what are we about?

Ars Poetica

GloPoWriMo 3 - vocation

GloPoWriMo Day 2 - after Ellen Bryant Voigt

GloPoWriMo Day 1 - tree tanka

becoming

it's no one's (and everyone's) fault

somewhere waiting

what if

brief and to the gentle point

unearthing the good news

hovering into 2026: a winged color goddess

poem of a dress

tastes like...happy

not very spooky at all