Welcome from across the pond.  I am currently in Ireland but planned this post in advance.  I will most likely be on hiatus until July.
Michelle at Michelle Kogan is hosting us today.  I love Michelle's work. And I am tempted to take an online class from her.

This week I am sharing the second of inspiration pieces that Linda Mitchell sent me.  It is a poem, "Coda". It's fitting that next week we will move into summer and so this is our final "spring' Friday.

Coda
Noun MUSIC

1. the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure.

Now green, these trees are winter-wise
scarred by ice, snow and wind.

Scarred by ice, snow and wind
red bud waves fuchsia with survival pride. 

Red bud bears notes from our sun
Written in invisible ink.

invisible ink revealed by rain
Wintertime is done let us turn toward spring
​
Spring reveals herself in rain soaked woods
singing to herself.

​From woods to shore bluebells hum
    a rising chorus to answer Spring
    
Spring responds – waits a beat for the trees
Now green, these trees are winter wise. 

© 2022 Linda Mitchell
​inspiration piece

Buffy at Buffy Silverman is hosting Poetry Friday today.  I was excited to see beautiful lady slipper s on her blog and notice of her new book this fall. How exciting.

I recently had the fun opportunity to participate in Spark 51.  I asked Linda Mitchell to partner with me on the project.  Since we both wanted to send each other an art inspiration piece and a poem inspiration piece, we ended up with four projects.  LOL! Today I'm sharing my response to Linda's art inspiration piece. It provided me with the opportunity to delve into Amanda Gorman's Call Us What We Carry for a cento poem.

A cento, a poem created  of lines and phrases from other previously written poems like a collage. Like  a collage, perfect for the mixed media collage that Linda sent me.

The lines are from Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman, 2021:
1.  “Ship’s Manifest
2.  ”School’s Out”
​3.  “Fugue”
4.  “Life”
5.  “Lighthouse”
6.  “Compass”
7.  “The Hill We Climb”
8.  “Every Day We are Learning”
9.   “The Miracle of Morning”
10.   “Surviving”
​11.  “Call Up”
​12.  “The Hill We Climb”

Welcome to Poetry Friday.  Karen at Karen Edmisten* is hosting the round up.

I'm in somewhat late. I had a few poems from a fifth grade class I subbed in recently.  So I thought I would share them. 

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 Linda at A Word Edgewise has an unexpected post today as she hosts Poetry Friday
It was not the week anyone expected with the tragedy in Texas. Another shooting. Another elementary school. It hits hard.  I've checked in with my teacher friends this week. There are no words. And yet I hunker down into poetry.  I was thankful for Amanda Gorman's book, Call Us What We Carry. I am working on a project and am using her book.
This line resonated with me after Tuesday:

So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend ~ “The Miracle of Morning”
I wonder how many more shootings will it take, how many more times do we need to mourn and mend?

The Poetry Sisters suggested for May's challenge  to write a poem using the words string, thread, rope and/or chain.  I immediately thought of William Stafford's poem, “The Way It Is".
I wrote one earlier in the month. But in response to Tuesday's news, I wrote another.

Earlier in May
There’s a thread you follow
~ William Stafford ~
​
In the middle of the night, there’s
​a moment in a dream a
startling discovery, as you pull a red thread
unraveling at the bed’s edge you
watch the floor vanish into your past and you follow

©jone rush macculloch, 2022

In response to the Texas tragedy.
There’s a thread you follow
~ William Stafford ~

In the middle of the day, there’s
a moment in which a
classroom doesn’t know their threads
of life will unravel. And again, you
yell out in anger, asking, when gun safety reform will  follow

©jone rush macculloch, 2022

It's Poetry Friday and  Carmela at Teaching Authors has all the details for today's fabulous poems. At Teaching Authors, there's a sneak peak of a very cool  poetry STEAM project and a poem from Imperfect II.

I have been able to sub in the fifth grade classes at my former school.  These students are pretty special as they were first graders when I retired.  Some of them were in my "Poetry Rocks" afterschool club.  And when I've subbed during the last four years, they have had poetry lessons.  I have watched them grow as poets.
These two classes did the Color Poem and Art project with a 4 x4 square of a monochromatic collage. It's been fun to bring in some of the papers I use in my art for the students to choose from for their project.

Welcome to Poetry Friday, hosted by Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup. She has a fabulous post with Mom filled poems and remembering her mom is photos.
I love this: "What we wouldn’t give for just one more sip of our mothers’ unconditional love."  Absolutely, Jama.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of subbing in a library and the teacher librarian asked if I would do poetry with the fourth and fifth grade classes.  Who's going to turn that down? I've been thinking about ways to use Sylvia Vardell's and Janet Wong's, Things We Do, as mentor text.  When you have to teach in a thirty minute class, it's almost like a poetry slam.
I created a quick presentation of four slides, share a couple of poems from the book. (I really love Jack Prelutsky's "Eat"), introduced and guided the students through writing a skinny poem.  One thing about these poems is flexibility.  Technically, a skinny poem only allows for one word in  lines 3, 4,5 and  7, 8, 9 but we flex that rule little.

Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme has hosting duties this Poetry Friday.  Matt  has a terrific interview with  Leslie Bulion.
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Here I have an interview with Sally Walker.  Thanks to Mary Lee, I got in touch with  Anne Irza-Leggat at Candlewick Press. She connected me with two poets for this month that have new books coming out in April.  In the fall, I will be interviewing two more poets when their books arrive in the world.

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Meet Sally Walker.  This picture tell me that she and I could be great friends as I love a good hug with a tree.  from early readers to nature books STEM books, history and picture books, Sally has written so many.  Earth Verse was her first book written in haiku.

Her latest, Out of This World: Star-Studded Haiku, is as she says a  "language spaceship" . Through haiku, readers will travel the universe.  There's great back matter at the end of the book.

​Sally was gracious to answer questions I had for her. I loved learning about the diamonds that a certain planet has (read the interview to find out).

JRM: How did you get the idea for Out of This World: Star-Studded Haiku? What was your process for writing this book?
SW: The idea began with a haiku that I wrote about Saturn: Rings of rock and dust/circle around Saturn’s waist/cosmic Hula-Hoops. It made me smile, as I remembered summer days spent playing with a Hula-Hoop.
 
It became part of a manuscript with the working title Sci-ku.  As I have done in many of my books, I wanted to create a book that would as a bridge to connect science with literature—one that combined facts and language play. Sci-ku’shaiku ranged from geology, to space, to physics, and to biology. I submitted the manuscript to Hilary Van Dusen, my editor at Candlewick.  She liked the idea, but felt that the book would be more effective if all of the haiku immersed the reader in one particular scientific field. She was absolutely correct! I narrowed the focus to geology, my number one science love. The manuscript became Earth Verse: Haiku from the Ground Up. The haiku about Saturn ended up on the cutting room floor. Sadly, because I really liked that one.
 
After completing Earth Verse, Hilary asked if I was working on anything else. I wasn’t, but suddenly the “cosmic Hula-Hoops” haiku popped back into my mind. My email reply to her suggested that I do a companion volume to Earth Verse that could be titled Out of This World: Star-studded Haiku. Of course I included the haiku about Saturn among those that I submitted in my formal proposal! 
 
Part of my process for writing Out of This World was paying attention to the stars, planets, and the moon as they appear to move across the sky as Earth rotates. Early morning, just before dawn, is my favorite time to be outside.  Even on the coldest days, I go for a walk and look at the moon and the stars.  Another part of my process was to look at the stellar—ha, ha, that pun was too good to resist—photos on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) website, www.nasa.gov. It’s an awesome website where one can spend hours immersed in all kinds of space-related information.  The photos are beyond belief!!

JRM: I think one of the best parts about writing is doing research for a topic. What kind of research did you do for Out of This World?
SW: Research is, hands down, my favorite part of being an author!  An important part of writing this book, which later morphed into research, came from re-living experiences from my childhood. For example, I remember sitting in the backyard with my father on summer nights.  He would point out different constellations—Orion and the Big Dipper are two vivid memories—and tell me stories about how they got their name.  My family always watched lunar and solar eclipses. We always used the pinhole in cardboard way to view a solar eclipse safely. 
 
One Christmas, when I was about 10 years old, my cousin received a telescope as a gift. He invited us to his house one night so we could see Saturn’s rings.  That blew me away!  Maybe that’s how Galileo felt when he first saw them.
 
In July 1969, half the people in our neighborhood crowded around the television in my family’s livingroom and watched the Eagle land on the moon.  We all held our breath until it touched down and then cheered!!  Reality TV at its absolute best!!!  
 
I researched scientific papers, books, old newspapers, and NASA’s website about all of these topics for additional information, as well as important updates, to material that I remembered from childhood.  
 
Interestingly, research that I’d done for other books gave me a lot of information for Out of This World. My research adventures for Boundaries, my book about the Mason-Dixon line, led to planetarium visits and lots of stargazing.  Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon drew their famous line of latitude guided by the position of stars. 
 
My husband, a volcanologist, was happy to talk with me about the Martian volcano Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system. In college, when I majored in geology, I learned that scientists theorize that an asteroid strike 65 million years ago likely led to the extinction of dinosaurs on Earth. It seemed natural for me to write a haiku about that.
 
JRM: What was the most surprising discovery you had in writing this book?
SW: Good question! One discovery that I knew absolutely NOTHING about was that it rains diamonds on the planet Uranus.  That planet, one of our solar system’s four planets that have no solid land surface, has a slushy plasma ocean that surrounds the planet’s solid core.  The pressure within the ocean forces carbon atoms to crystallize as diamonds. Because the diamonds are heavier than the surrounding “slush,” they rain downward, toward the core.
 
This discovery also led to a funny research story. When Matthew Trueman was creating the illustration for the haiku diamonds rain, unseen/in a slushy plasma sea/sunken treasure trove, he asked what color the sea was likely to be.  I had NO idea.  So, I did some research.  I emailed Dr. Dirk Gericke and asked him.  He is a professor at the Centre for Fusion, Space & Astrophysics, in the Department of Physics, at the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. Dr. Gericke has written several papers on Uranus’s plasma sea.  He helped me tweak the haiku so it was accurate, but he also consulted with his colleagues about the color of the plasma ocean.  While no one can actually see it, their consensus (based on the chemical composition) is that the sea is bluish. I passed this information along to Matthew!
 
JRM: What led you to write this book in haiku? How do you decide if you want to write in prose or haiku?
 SW: It was always intended to be a combination of haiku and nonfiction prose.  My favorite haiku are those that not only make me think or feel about something, but also make me want to discover something new about the “moment” that I encountered while reading a particular haiku. I hope that the haiku in Out of This World will make readers think and ask questions.  The narrative section of the book, hopefully, provides answers to some of those questions. 
 
Haiku is pretty much the only kind of poetry that I write.  But I did not always enjoy it.  I remember being taught about haiku in fourth grade.  The teacher explained what it was: a short poem that did not rhyme, had only seventeen syllables, and revealed a profound, seasonal moment in nature.  We didn’t talk about Japanese culture at all. Nor did we discuss how “less” can actually be “more.” She just read us a few haiku written by Basho and Issa. Sadly, I was too young to appreciate them—at least the ones she read to us.  They made me feel “itchy” because I didn’t understand what they were about.  When she asked us to write haiku, I felt like I was being asked to write something so profound that it was incomprehensible. Forcing the incomprehensible into a seventeen-syllable, non-rhyming poem made the assignment essentially impossible for me. Now, as an adult, I read a haiku like Basho’s The Old Pond  (An old silent pond/a frog jumps into the pond--/Splash! Silence again.) and marvel at it.  But the nine-year-old me wouldn’t have understood and appreciated all it encompasses.  I would not have savored that exquisite last moment. I would have splashed into the pond and caught the frog.
 
Today’s young readers meet haiku through the mastery of poets such as Paul Janeczko, Janet Wong, and J. Patrick Lewis. Children easily relate to their poems. They meet the reader in a place or moment that she or he can understand. A park bench, a curbside puddle, a beloved pet. That is incredibly powerful and freeing. Modern haiku poets often step outside the traditional guidelines of including a seasonal reference. And they frequently inject humor.
 
Many of the haiku in Earth Verse and Out of This World explore moments in nature, but they are moments that exist for eons.  I remember one of my geology professors telling us that in the timeline of life on Earth, humans have existed in the length of time that it takes to light a match and immediately blow it out. The formation of stars, land surfaces being eroded by glaciers and wind, an asteroid that wipes out millions of years of dinosaur existence are natural, cosmic “moments.” They exist on a timeline, the length of which we can scarcely comprehend.  Why not write haiku about them? 
 
Although some poets write haiku that don’t strictly adhere to the seventeen-syllable format, I choose to do so.  I like the challenge of seeking the perfect combination of words to convey an idea or impression in exactly seventeen syllables.  It’s a game with language that lets me play with words, something I love to do. It requires lots and lots and lots of mental revision to get the syllable count for each line correct.  That’s cool too, because many of the haiku that I write finally reach their “Eureka!” word-choice completion while I am outside walking and appreciating nature!  

JRM: What are your upcoming projects?
SW: My next book is UNDERGROUND FIRE: HOPE, SACRIFICE, AND COURAGE IN THE CHERRY MINE DISASTER. The 1909 Cherry Mine fire is one of the worst coal mine disasters in United States’ history.  My home is only 50 miles from Cherry, Illinois, and the story is one that I have wanted to bring to young readers for some years.  It’s especially timely, given that it’s a story of immigrants and fossil fuel, both of which figure prominently in the news today. The publication date is October 2022.  I do have another haiku book in the pipeline, scheduled for publication in Spring 2023. At the moment the title is TREES: HAIKU FROM ROOTS TO LEAVES. It's a bit early to share much more about it, but I can say that the illustrations are wonderful!   Both books are with Candlewick Press.

BONUS I:
In another email, Sally and I shared an exchange about writing haiku for adults as well as the haiku structure. 
She shared this haiku
​
Language meanders,
words channeled into patterns.
Poetic rivers

BONUS II:
Regarding haiku versus senryu Sally shared this little fact, I enjoy senryu a lot. In fact, I had to avoid producing them when I wrote Earth Verse and Out of This World.

Thank you so much, Sally!

Congratulations to Leigh Ek.  Please email me your address so I can send you a copy of Africantown by Irene Latham and Charles Waters.

There's time to comment on the celebration of Imperfect II in the world posted on April 1. Check out the blog post to see the prize.  If you like to draw  or you know someone who does, you should comment. Deadline is April 15.

PLUS...leave a comment here to win a copy of Out of This World.   I choose a winner and announce on April 22.

Today is April 1, 2022, the beginning of National Poetry Month.  Heidi at my juicy little universe is hosting all the poetry goodness in the world today.

Happy Book Birthday, Imperfect II. Thank you Tabatha Yeatts for editing and encouraging people to submit.  So excited to be a part of this collection. Anthologies for the MG audience, 5th-9th grades, are limited.  

Tabatha Yeatts has offered a prize that is swoon worthy. A copy of 3d drawing and optical illusions: how to draw optical illusions and 3d art step by step Guide for Kids, Teens and Students. New edition 
and a set of Staedtler Mars Lumograph Art Drawing Pencils, 12 Pack Graphite Pencils in Metal Case .

It's the perfect prize to go with a sneak peek at Alana Devito's poem, "The Art Teacher Said" which is in this new collection.

What a great way to begin National Poetry Month.  I hope you'll come back for some great interviews this month.

 Amy at The Poem Farm is hosting Poetry Friday this week.  
She's looking back at the previous National Poetry Months as she prepares for 2022 National Poetry Month.  Do you have a proverb waiting to be a poem?  Check out Amy's idea for April.
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For more than ten years, I have participate in the monthly challenge of writing and posting a poem a day for April.  I've written haiku, haiga, chose words with "LL" and write poems for those words, collaborated with a nature photographer and wrote NW creature poem, written food poems, and worked on revisions.

As I started to ponder what to do for 2022, I had this grand idea left over form the #februallage poem.  Then I had a little heart to heart with myself.  About staying focused. About finishing the revision I want to finish before June on my WIP.  So this year, instead of running and diving headlong into the new shiny idea, I am hanging out with my WIP.  It's important and deserves my attention.

That said, for Poetry Fridays I have three great author interviews as well as celebrating a new anthology for middle schoolers. Please enjoy this video about Poetry Friday here for the next month
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​in the night
Ukrainian Sunflowers
seeds of peace

©2022 Jone Rush MacCulloch