Wednesday, April 4, 2012

National Poetry Month Off and Running



April is National Poetry Month, so it is very fitting that we are preparing Stoneboat 2.2 for your reading pleasure. We expect to have the new issue in hand on April 16 or thereabouts, just in time for the April 21 release reading at Paradigm Coffee and Music. We trust that if you are within a 60-mile radius of Sheboygan, you will do your best to come and join us. We will have folks coming from Milwaukee, Elkhart Lake, and Manitowoc as well as two readers participating via Skype from Alaska and San Francisco. The reading is from 2-4 p.m. and will conclude with an open mic, so bring an original poem or prose excerpt, or a favorite piece by another author.


Other neat stuff going on this month that I invite you to peruse:

1.YARN (Young Adult Review Network) is doing a project called Crossing Country Line by Line. Editor Colleen Oakley has invited poets to respond to a previous poem and thus create a poetry chain. Please check out my poem, “Holy Cow,” in response to a poem by Todd Boss, “My High Horse.”

2.Author Amok is a delightfully humorous and informative blog hosted by Laura Shovan. Laura has invited poets to contribute to her month-long endeavor, “30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets.” Each day, she has a guest blogger sharing a tip. Next week, I will provide some poetic food for thought, tentatively called “Prepare and Set Aside.”

3. The Poem Farm is a blog filled with great tips for people who teach poetry to children, hosted by Amy VanDerwater. Amy is doing a “dictionary hike,” this month. Each day is devoted to a letter of the alphabet and a corresponding word pulled randomly from the dictionary. Amy is cranking out some lovely daily poems for young readers, and for the young at heart. (Oh, yeah, and I got it in my mind—on Amy’s invitation—that I ought to challenge myself to write a daily haiku using the word of the day, which I am posting in her comments section. Tomorrow is E. Ecstatic? Eggs? Ergonomic? Tune in to find out, and then write a poem, why dontcha?

So much fun stuff. It’s National Poetry Month. Get poetic, people.

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