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Tag Archives: poetry
Writing with Latino Youth
One of the great things I was involved with this summer was a twice-weekly writing workshop with Latino youth in Indianapolis – middle schoolers through seniors in high school. As part of their summer program, some of them were excited to be there. Nervous, yes, but they liked to write and wanted to do more. For others, well, let’s just say they got stuck with their last choice. We used writing prompts in every session, some related to hobbies and some to heritage. On Wednesdays, a spoken word poet came for the last hour and guided us through memories and feelings to create prose poems. No matter what their attitude when they started, by the end of our six weeks, these teens had produced some powerful writing. Strong emotions, some lovely phrases, and an amazing sense of empowerment for all of them. One of our early prompts was: “Just because ____, doesn’t … Continue reading
Teenage Crushes and Poetry
In lieu of a “real” blog post (I’ve never had a summer college class before, let alone two, and I’m still recovering), here’s a bit of my teen years wrapped up in a poem. Written for one of said classes, of course. And before you dig in, I should warn you that while my literary career began with poetry (a whole book of poems with cake/bake/snake/rake rhymes when I was the ripe old age of six), this is my first real poem. Somehow my “Intro to Creative Writing” only covered fiction. So be nice! Did you have a teenage crush that crushed you? Or did the two of you get together? Share your crush in the comments below and let us know how it turned out.
Posted in Home & Family, Poetry, Relationships
Tagged boyfriend, Jennifer Jensen, poems, poetry, Romance, teen crush, teens
7 Comments
Children’s poems off to a contest
I subscribe to Children’s Writer, a newsletter for, well, children’s writers. They have two contests a year, and the most recent one was for a set of children’s poems. I write children’s fiction, and sometimes try my hand at non-fiction, but have never done poetry. So I noodled a few ideas in my head, preschool-oriented, and came up with three short humorous (I hope) rhymes. One called “Bunny Ears” about tying knots instead of bows; one called “All By Myself” about choosing clothes for school, and one called “Jelly Jamboree” with smears of jelly everywhere. I don’t know if they’re worth anything, but it was fun. Worked on fine-tuning meter and word choice with my critique group, and they’re off to the contest. Won’t know results until June or July, but wish me luck!
Posted in WRITING
Tagged children's poems, poetry, WRITING, writing contests
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