Poetry Challenge #212 Mad As a Hatter
Mad as a hatter? Join the crowd for today is officially Mad Hatter’s Day!
Mad Hatters were well-known in the 1800’s. (Lewis Carroll didn’t create them . . . neither did Johnny Depp or Ed Wynn.)
Hatters—the people who made hats—haberdashers—often used mercury in the process. People who came into contact with mercury often ended up with many strange symptoms: shaking, mood swings, unpredictable behavior, and hallucinations. The saying “mad as a hatter” came to describe those strange behaviors. Characters appeared in books—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—or in comics illustrating these unpredictable behaviors.
Poetry Challenge #212
Mad As a Hatter
But what if your hat was mad? Why might it be mad? Is it dirty? Wet? Too hot? Tired of sitting on your head?
Write a personification poem from the point of view of a mad hat.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 1990+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #211-Coffee? Tea? Or...
Coffee?
Latte? Americano? Cappuccino? Cold Brew? Espresso?
Why not? After all, it is National Coffee Day (Sept 29). While we’re on the subject:
Lore has it that in the 17th century, one Baba Budan, a Sufi Saint/Monk/Tourist, made the pilgrimage from India to Mecca, and while visiting the Yemen port city of Mocha, was served a drink called “Quahwa” which wowed him. So, even though it was illegal to take green coffee seeds from Arabia, Baba Budan hid 7 green coffee seeds in his beard and smuggled them back home to Mysore. He planted them, they grew, he shared the quahwa with friends, they grew some too, thus bringing coffee to India. Put that in your coffee mill and grind it!
Or… maybe, after all that, you prefer Tea?
Darjeeling, Earl Gray, English Breakfast, chamomile, mint?
or Hot Chocolate?
Raspberry? Mexican? with whipped cream? marshmallows? Fluff?
Rumor has it Starbucks Pumpkin Spice is back!
Poetry Challenge #211
Coffee? Tea? Or . . . What’s Your Pleasure?
Whatever you like to drink, it’s time to make up a new flavor. Write a poem about this flavor and give it a great name. Make us see it, smell it, taste it, and WANT it.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Once you've finished your poem, treat yourself to a cup of your creation and a movie. Here’s more about Baba Budan courtesy of Akara Coffee.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 1990+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #210-Engines Off!
Hide those car keys! Engines Off! Today is World Car Free Day.
Ever wonder why cars are also called “autos”? I’m thinking it’s to bless or blame one guy, Nicolaus Otto, who in 1876 “invented an effective gas motor engine.” Daimler and Benz may have built cars before him, but Otto’s 4-stroke internal combustion engine called the “Otto Cycle Engine” is what made the wheels go around…and around and around and around…
January 29, 1886 Benz was granted the first automobile patent.
…Which seemed to make everyone, especially the oil & gas industry, very happy. Until sometime in the 50s, when some folks poked their heads out of the exhaust fumes and realized that cars were changing our cities, neighborhoods, lives. According to the National Day Calendar website, “from 1956 to 1957, the Netherlands and Belgium held car-free Sundays.” On September 22, 2000, the European Car Free Day was held. It has since been an annual event for 46 countries and 2,000 cities all over the world—and now, here!
Poetry Challenge #210
Engines Off!
Take a moment to silence those noisy engines—if only in your mind—and imagine a day without cars. Any cars on the road, or buses, motorcycles, lawnmowers, too. What would you do? What sounds could you hear that you don’t usually? Where might you go and how would you get there?
If you can agree that the world—for this one car-free day—would be a quieter and probably slower place, challenge yourself to use quieter and slower sounding words.
“Quieter” words are those without hard-sounding endings: the hard K,G,T consonants.
“Slower words often have repeated vowel sounds and repeated soft consonants: double s, double m or n sounds.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Awwway weeeeee goooooooo!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 1990+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #209-Earth First
Think: Green
Think: Peace
Today, because it’s National Green Peace Day. But not just today. Think Earth First because it’s time. It’s long past time!
We can change and make changes to help our world.
AND because, if we consciously think “Earth” before we do whatever it is we have to do: before we go; before we toss; before we buy; before. . . before we ignore, we can change and make changes to help our world.
Poetry Challenge #209
Green Peace
There’s nothing quite like the color green, and everyone wants peace. For this poem, Today, think of as many words that can rhyme with green or peace and use them in a poem.
For an extra challenge, do not let the last words in lines rhyme.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Think Green Peace
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 1990+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #208-Amp It Up!
The instant I learned there was such a thing as National Ampersand Day, Joni Mitchell’s song “Twisted” popped into my head:
& he thought I was nuts/No more ifs or & or buts, oh no!/They say as a child I appeared a little bit wild with all my crazy ideas/but I knew what was a jean-yuus . . .
But then I thought, why not? After all doesn’t it seem right & fitting to set aside time to celebrate a symbol that dates back more than 2,000 years; & was once the last letter of the English alphabet (before Z took its place);& stands for the latin word et, “and” in English as in the word etcetera; &is derived from an alteration of “and per se and,” meaning (i.e. ‘&’); & is arguably the most used lologram* in the English language? & so, without further ado:
Poetry Challenge #208
AMP IT UP
Let’s use these “how to celebrate ampersand day” suggestions to revise a poem.
#1 Select a poem to revise
Now: AMPersand IT UP…rather in the spirit of the day…& IT UP!
#2 Substitute an ampersand “& “ for every “and” in the poem.
#3 Throughout the poem, replace the “and” sound with an ampersand. For example: change Andrea to &rea; Alexander to Alex&er, Grandma to Gr&ma; etc. & so forth.
#4 If your poem doesn’t have enough ampersands to make it interesting—or &y at all—change & add words until it looks more interesting.
#5 If you dare, send your revised poem to a friend for decoding.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it! & Have Fun!
*A logogram is a character that represents a word or phrase commonly used in shorthand. Other lolograms include @, #, $, %… & numbers such as 4 . . . LOL (yep LOL is a lologram too, lol!)
& BTW: Amersand Day was declared “in 2015 by Chaz DeSimone, an author, designer, typographer & founder of AmperArt an initiative which considers the ampersand to be an art form.”
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #207-Who Gives a Cluck?
Back when Buz and Tod were getting their kicks cruising Route 66, if their tummies growled all they had to do was look up in the sky, not at a bird or a plane, but west to the 22-foot-high Chicken Boy!
For more than 20 years, 1960-1984, Chicken Boy, a huge fiberglass statue a burly mannish “boy” with a chicken head clutching a bucket of fried chicken, “affectionately known as ‘the Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles’”, perched atop LA’s Chicken Boy restaurant. The restaurant closed after the owner died but Chicken Boy lived on—although buried deep in storage until 2007 when thanks to fundraising effort he was resurrected and re-erected in front of owner Amy Inouye’s design firm in Highland Park, CA.
Wondering if cruising to LA to see the Chicken Boy is still a thing? Bet your tail feathers it is! In 2010, then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger awarded it the Governor's Historic Preservation Award.
And today, September 1st, National Chicken Boy Day, commemorates that day. Who gives a cluck? We do!
Poetry Challenge #207
What the Cluck!?
Write a Chicken Boy poem. Whether it features that 22-foot-high statue, or a boy and a chicken, or the Chicken Boys band (out of Austin, of course.)
Bwalk-blwak-blawk, just as chickens don’t all look the same—
There are hundreds of different breeds of chicken distinguished by: size, plumage color, comb type, skin color, number of toes, amount of feathering, egg color, and place of origin.[1]. . . also roughly divided by primary use, whether for eggs, meat, or ornamental purposes, and with some considered to be dual-purpose.[1]
—Chickens don’t all talk the same talk. But, no matter how its written: bwalk, cluck, peekok-peekok or some other spelling from far far away, when it comes to chicken verbalization the one universal is that hard K sound at the end.
Sooooooooo…(or should I say “sawk”). . . Think “Hard K” as you craft your poem.
And then, after you have a draft, go back over through your poem and change words, change sounds, invent words with the sole purpose of making your Chicken Boy poem sound as clucky as possible.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And for inspiration a Chicken Boy Playlist:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #206-AS If We Need A Excuse to Split
It’s Banana Split Day! Think of that chocolate ice cream drenched in chocolate syrup, the vanilla covered with crushed pineapple, and strawberry ice cream drowning in strawberry sauce. Imagine a perfect banana, split lengthwise down the middle. Picture the swirly mounds of whipped cream on each scoop, each with a maraschino cherry cushioned on top, their candied stems like smiles. Add a sprinkling of nuts and…Yum!!!
Anyone who’s called Banana Splits addictive might be onto something. Pharmacist David Strickler ,a.k.a. Doc Strickler, the “king of the banana split” a soda jerk at Tassell Pharmacy in Latrobe, PA, concocted the first split in 1904.
Poetry Challenge #206
Make Mine a Banana Split
What ingredients do you like best on your Banana Split?
Pick two or three of your ingredients and SPLIT them into syllables. (For example banana in syllables would be ba-na-na.)
Write a line that rhymes with each of the syllables.
Between the lines, repeat the syllable as many times as you want. Make it sound as good as it tastes.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #205-Well, Since You Asked . . .
Before online ads, Insta-influencers & mail slot clogging catalogues there were Montgomery Ward, Sears, and the diamond of them all, Neiman Marcus. Long before this pandemic folks ordered everything from catalogues—and I’m not just talking undies—I mean ev-re-thing from houses to boats, gold-plated toilets and jets. Sears Home Kits were huge sellers! From 1908-1940 Sears sold about 70,000 kit homes in 48 states. They came assembly ready in 447 different design, everything included—lumber, windows, nails & plans. Unless you’re in Hawaii or Alaska, some no doubt line the streets where you live.
Best or worst “Monkey Ward”, as we called it, was first. “The very first Montgomery Ward Catalog [launched on this day, August 18th, 1872], consisted of an 8 by 12-inch single sheet of paper. On it, Ward included the merchandise for sale, price list, and ordering instructions. Before long, the Montgomery Wards single-page list of products grew into a 540 page illustrated book selling over 20,000 items.”
Poetry Challenge #205
Well, Since You Asked . . .
In honor of National Mail-Order Catalogue Day, let’s do as they/we did back in the day, and kids (of all ages) then and now can spend hours doing. Pull out a mail order catalogue, alas, as Montgomery Ward went out of business in 2001 so it can’t be that one, but any other catalogue, whether it sells plants, furnishings, tools, beauty products, or in a pinch a grocery store flyer will do.
Imagine you’ve just entered a contest and the GRAND PRIZE is a shopping spree in the catalogue of your choice. The sky’s the limit as to which or how many items you can choose. There’s only one way to win. Yep, here’s where the poetry comes in:
Write a poem about which items you chose and why you chose them. Maybe a list poem, an epistolary poem ie Dear Aaron Ward . . . or some other form. Warning: All items listed must be accompanied by at least one modifier*. (Any item without a modifier will be disqualified.)
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
*What’s a modifier? “A modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that describes something or makes its meaning more specific.”-thank you grammar-monster.com.
And, for your cruising-the-neighborhood pleasure: How To Identify a Sears Kit Home.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .