Category: Taylor Mali

Poetry Friday, Week 9: Late Edition

3/4/2022

Poetry Friday is being rounded up by Kat at Kathryn Apel today. Kat is sharing the release of her new book, What Snail Knows amid a stormy week of weather and war in Ukraine.

Today I headed to the school of a teacher library friend to teach in her library for half day. I was greeted by the school principal. "Would I please teach in a fifth grade classroom? Twenty-two staff people out and about half the jobs unfilled, " she said. I don't really teach in classrooms outside my former school but I said yes as I was scheduled to see only two classes for library. I told the principal that would be teaching a poetry lesson. She was fine with that decision. She gave me the class list, informed me that there would be an assistant in the room and that she and the associate principal would stop in on occasion.

Taylor Mali's Slam Mad Lib Poetry

In February, I attended via Zoom a workshop with Taylor Mali. I have been itching to try this poetry lesson, Slam Mad Lib Poetry .
I decided that with this class a brief lesson on concrete nouns versus non-concrete nouns (thank you, Paulann Peterson for you workshop)and describing words would be helpful.
Then we used the directions by Mali to create our poems. Students came to me when finished so that we could get them on Padlet. For me, Padlet, provides a visual and way to do a quick revision. It was a great morning.

Poetry Friday, Week 6: A Timely Prompt

2/10/2022

Linda at TeacherDance is full of hearts in many different forms. Thank you for hosting today.

A Clock and Books

© Jone Rush MacCulloch
2022
Mixed media (photos, magazine, ink, napkin)

Created for Laura Shovan’s 10th Annual February Poetry Project: “Time”. This quote from Tom Robbins speaks to me:

“A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

As well as this quote from Albert Einstein: “Time is relative.”
The clock is a photo of my great uncle’s clock which he won at the 1908 Bloomsburg Fair in Pennsylvania. It’s sitting on a photo of my grandmother’s tatting.

My poem is inspired from a writing on Taylor Mali's blog. I used the "I Remembered" prompt to get started I had the privilege of listening to his talk last night, "Debt of Memory." It was exactly what I needed, especially the term "augmented memory.'

I Remembered

The American Mantle Clock
chimed during family dinners

Great-uncle Jim’s prize,
won at the 1908 Bloomsburg Fair

Traveled from the Pennsylvania woods
to the California high desert in the 40’s

Perched atop the handcrafted china closet,
feather dusted by many young hands

I raced the clock to finish,
diagramming sentences before the hour

of gloaming as the wheels and gears
of my mind spun stories in syncopated time

© 2022, jone rush macculloch

Poetry Friday, Week 9: Late Edition

Taylor Mali's Slam Mad Lib Poetry

Poetry Friday, Week 6: A Timely Prompt

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