 © Graphic by Amber Fleek Irene at Live Your Poem has the poetry round up today. She has a lot of cool poetry happenings like a poetry gumball machine. Matthew Forrest Esenwine has published several poetry but this month he has a debut poetry anthology, A Universe of Rainbows: Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World. I was lucky to have Matthew answer a few questions about this anthology.  JRM: This is your first anthology. What made you decide you wanted to create one? MFE: When I first came up with the idea of doing a rainbows-themed poetry collection in early 2019, I began researching all the different rainbows in the world - many of which I never even knew about, like pilot's glories, rainbow scarabs, and Colombia's Caño Cristales (aka, the Rainbow River). But the more I thought about what rainbows represent, like hope and diversity, the more I thought pulling a bunch of poet friends together and creating an anthology of diverse voices would be a cool way to approach the project. JRM: What surprised you about creating an anthology? MFE: Several folks have asked me that, and I'm not sure I was surprised by anything, to be honest! Even though I'd never assembled an anthology before, I've contributed dozens of poems to anthologies and literary journals over the past few decades, so I had a good understanding of what I'd likely need to do; plus, I spoke with Lee Bennett Hopkins, the Pied Piper of Poetry himself, before I began the process to see what he thought of the idea. He loved it! He offered some advice for putting it together and was even going to write the flower poem for the book, before he passed later that year. I'm grateful to our mutual friend Rebecca Kai Dotlich for stepping up and writing a poem about what was to be Lee's subject. JRM: Which came first: the categories or the poems from the poets? MFE: The categories and subjects all came first. As I researched, I wrote down all the subjects I thought would make for good poems and had a list of at least a couple dozen, which was more than I needed. But as I looked over the list to determine which subjects would stay and which would go, I knew I needed some sort of narrative, or structure, to hold the collection together, to give the book some cohesiveness. So I grouped the subjects into categories of "water, rock, animal, etc." to see what I could come up with, and eventually settled on the five categories you'll see in the book: "Rainbows of Light, "Rainbow Waters, "Living Rainbows," "Rainbows of Rock," and "Rainbows Beyond." Not that it's immediately obvious, but there's a narrative here, beginning with miniscule rain droplets refracting sunlight and slowly getting bigger and bigger, expanding the book's scope from water to plant and animal to mountains and caves and finally to the largest rainbow we know, the Rainbow Nebula in Orion. JRM: What kind of research did you do for the sidebars with the poems? In the poem “Hello, Pilot!”, did you know you would be researching the term “pilot’s glory"? Or was that a result of Renee M. LaTulippe’s poem? MFE: The pilot's glory phenomenon was one I'd never heard of before, but I thought that, for a child, the idea of looking 'down' at a rainbow was intriguing - not just poetically, but visually. Once I had all the poems in hand, I sat down and wrote the sidebars so that I could reference the poems and try to make all the text as cohesive (there's that word again!) as possible. JRM: Tell us more about your experience at the Zhangye Danxia GeoPark. It looks like it would be amazing. MFE: I've never been there, but it does look like a fantastically amazing place to visit. Coincidentally, when I was signing ARCs of the book at NCTE in Boston last Nov., we ran out of copies and switched to half-size prints of that particular spread. As I was signing them, a young Asian woman in line exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, this is where I grew up!" We were all stunned! But it was true: she was from China and had grown up right nearby this amazing geological feature. Can you imagine living next door to that?? JRM: Was there a poem that isn’t in the book that you wish you had included? MFE: Yes and no - I did write a poem about rainbow clouds, but ultimately opted to not use it because I felt there were enough sky/weather type poems already and didn't want to load up the book with too much of the same thing. So it's somewhere between a polished draft and final draft: Rainbow Clouds On arctic nights we ebb and flow higher than the cirrus go; bending light, begin to glow, and in the sky - Oh! What a show! – © 2024 Matt F. Esenwine, all rights reserved I do mention rainbow clouds in the anthology, though, as I thought they were an important aspect of the science behind rainbows. I make reference to them in the sidebar for the first poem in the anthology, Nikki Grimes' lovely "The Saturday of No." JRM: What plans do you have for another anthology? MFE: I actually have two more on the way! One is under contract with Eerdmans and will hopefully see the light of day by maybe 2028 or 2029, and another will likely soon be under contract with a different publisher, with a tentative date of 2028. I have plenty of others I'm submitting as we speak, too!  With Jamey, his talented illustrator.  ICYMII missed last week's Poetry Friday. I posted these videos from my Texas Women's University students. I want to make sure people get to see them.
This year for the midterm project, I took some poems from poetry friends as well as working with Heidi Bee Roemer who has a most excellent Steamed Power Poetry Contest. Students selected from a variety of poems. They are encouraged to submit the poems to the contest but that is optional. Here are the first five of ten poems. Enjoy. Mariana V.: At The Pet Shop by Heidi Bee Roemer. Clarissa R.:Welcome to the Science Lab by Heidi Bee Roemer Sierra B.: Name That Seed! by Heidi Bee Roemer Aisha L.: Ode to the Washing Machine by Rebecca Kai Dotlich Victoria T.: My New Remote by Ken Nesbitt Note: The static audio at the beginning is intentional.  I have today's Kidlit Progressive Poetry line. I hope you'll indulge me as I share my Texas Women's University Poetry Video links. Allergies caught up with me on Friday thus delaying a poem This year for the midterm project, I took some poems from poetry friends as well as working with Heidi Bee Roemer who has a most excellent Steamed Power Poetry Contest. Students selected from a variety of poems. They are encouraged to submit the poems to the contest but that is optional. Here are the first five of ten poems. Enjoy. Mariana V.: At The Pet Shop by Heidi Bee Roemer. Clarissa R.:Welcome to the Science Lab by Heidi Bee Roemer Sierra B.: Name That Seed! by Heidi Bee Roemer Aisha L.: Ode to the Washing Machine by Rebecca Kai Dotlich Victoria T.: My New Remote by Ken Nesbitt Note: The static audio at the beginning is intentional. Kidlit Progressive Poem 2025: It's 13th Year I think I may have participated in the annual progressive poem every year. Irene Latham began the tradition in 2012 and hosted until 2019. (Early archives here.) Margaret Simon stepped in and has been hosting since 2020. (Recent archives are tabs at the top of her page.) The rules: The poem passes from blog to blog Each poet-blogger adds a line. The poem is for children. Other than that, anything goes. Each blogger will copy the previous line exactly as written (unless permission from the previous poet is obtained) and add their line, offering commentary on their process if they wish. This year Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewisel wrote the beginning line and yesterday Buffy Silverman at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog left me a line which instantly made me think of my deck with the Downy woodpeckers and hummingbirds. Open an April window let sunlight paint the air stippling every dogwood dappling daffodils with flair Race to the garden where woodpeckers drum as hummingbirds thrum Now it travels to Janice Scully at Salt City Verse. April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/ April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/ April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/ April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces April 13 Cathy Stenquist April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading April 21 Tanita at {fiction instead of lies} April 22 Patricia Franz April 23 Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/ April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins is hosting Poetry Friday. It was exciting to see her new book which I promptly ordered s signed copy. I love her poetry project for April. I'm planning to write to a prompt a day and also work on completing the revision of my manuscript during poetry month. Here's a sneak peak of the DAY 1 prompt for April 1: CHASE.  National Poetry Month Activities For National Poetry Month, I am hosting a Pop-up poetry/writing event: Writing for a Shared World of Poetry, Saturday, April 5, 2025. 11 AM-12:30PM (EST), 8 AM-9:30 AM (PST) I held a writing event in January and it was lovely. I plan to share prompts, write for a bit, and share. You can sign up here. https://forms.gle/t6pxoWdUGhQ5MYrK7 2. Two Interviews: Matt Forest and Shirley Thacker 3. Two Video Fridays, featuring the poetry projects of my TWU students. 4. writing to the prompts below.  |
AuthorAll photos and poems in these blog posts are copyrighted to Jone Rush MacCulloch 2006- Present. Please do not copy, reprint or reproduce without written permission from me. 
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