Poetry Challenge #223-'Tis the Season!
It’s that time of year. It’s December 22nd, and no matter what we celebrate or where we live, we are all racing around trying to do too much all at once and everything else too—all the while trying to keep it real and still make it special. Right? The last thing you have time or energy for is writing a new poem. True? So I won’t ask you to. Promise.
Poetry Challenge #223
Tis the Season
First: Take one minute. One. 60 seconds to sort through some of the poems you’ve already written. Select one that you absolutely do not think works. One that you wrote on your least inspired day. One that, if a whole stack of your poetry blew across the room and out the window, you would race after first just so you could grab it before anyone else had a chance to read it. Yep. That one.
Now: Think of the Season: whether it’s Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukkah, winter in the Northern Hemisphere; summer in the South . . . What does Tis the Season mean to you?
Finally: Using words, images, sounds, and smells of the season, turn your hideous poem into a seasonal sensation! Twist it, change it, rearrange it, rhyme it, line it, redefine it. Sprinkle it with elf dust if you must. Surprise yourself!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
HAPPY CELEBRATING! Wishing you health and joy!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ 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.
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Poetry Challenge #222-Calling All Cat Herders!
Boots? Check! Hat? Check! Lasso? Check! Yeehaw! Y’all get ready for today, Dec 15, is officially National Cat Herders Day!
Thomas and Ruth Roy from Wellcat.com, herb growers and quirky holiday creators, invented Cat Herders Day to honor not cats, or cat herders (well maybe cat herder’s too.) but mostly people who’s jobs are challenging, chaotic, crA-ZZZ-y! Now it’s a thing.
Poetry Challenge #222
Calling All Cat Herders!
If you’ve ever tried to get a cat to do what you want it to do, you know that’s close to impossible. Now imagine a whole group of cats. Listed below are a bunch of cat types. Herd as many as you can into a poem—extra credit if the poem is NOT about cats.
Persian, Main Coon, Bengal, British Shorthair, Siamese, Sphinx, Ragdoll, Munchkin, Scottish Fold, Norwegian Forest, Savannah, Siberian, Polydactyl, Snowshoe, Calico
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And while we’re on the subject…
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ 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 #221-Buckle Up Sherman!
Let’s pretend! Just for today—because, after all, it is December 8th, National Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day. Begun by GEEK USA, participants must “spend the entire day in costume in character. The only rule is that you can not actually tell anyone that you are a time traveler.”
Poetry Challenge #221
Buckle Up Sherman!
Pretend that Doc Brown’s DeLorean or Mr. Peabody’s Time Travel Machine really works, and you can go back-back-back in time as far as you’d like, to any place you’d like. Or, if you’d rather, you can zoom-zoom forward into the future. Where would you go? To when? Why? What would you be wearing? How would you speak?
Write a poem about your travels, but, building on GEEK USA rules, do not tell us exactly where you go and when. Instead, use evocative description & dialogue to show us.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
“Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”….whoops, wrong show. . . “Ready, Marty?”
For inspiration, here are a few time Time Traveler books, something for everyone:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ 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 #220-Red Apple Day
No one seems to know how it came about, or why, but today, Dec 1st, 2021, is National Eat a Red Apple Day. Here’s what I do know:
Red vs. Green? Yellow wins! In spite of the prescribed “Apple a day…” apples are only the 2nd most consumed fruit in the U.S. Banana are #1.
Here’s something else: A poem doesn’t taste like an apple, but it can look like an apple, and it can be about an apple, or have apples in it, but it doesn’t have to.
Poetry Challenge #220
Wall and Red Apples
“Something there is that does not love a wall…”
Robert Frost wrote in the poem “Mending Walls”, published in 1914.
What if we changed that line to “Something there is that does not love a red apple”? Use that as the first line of your poem and see where it takes you.
Write a second verse replacing “red apple” with something else.
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 2000+ 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 #219 Two Scoops of Gratitude!
Gobble Gobble Gobble! That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow. Maybe you, too? Or maybe you’ve already enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast and will be going in for seconds…or thirds. Regardless of what you’ll eat, where you’ll go, what you’ll do, or whether you’ll celebrate alone or with other, let’s take a moment to reflect on reasons we have to give thanks. (For if you are reading this, then like me, you do have reasons.)
Spotted this rafter of turkeys strutting around our backyard last week. When I said our local B-Ball team “The Gobblers” was warming up, a friend wrote “you mean ‘pre-heating’!” Gobble-gobble!
Poetry Challenge #219
Two Scoops of Thanks
Write a poem of thanks. For? or To whom? is up to you.
The poem must be at least twelve words long—one word beginning with each letter of the word T-H-A-N-K-S-G-I-V-I-N-G.
Yes, it can be longer.
Yes, you can include words that begin with other letters, too.
Yes it can rhyme. . . No it doesn’t have to.
When you’ve finished, take a moment to polish your poem so you can share it—perhaps later, with pie!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Happy Thanksgiving! I am grateful for your support!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ 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 #218-Bread & Butter
The smell of Homemade Bread is one of the best smells in the world. Warm bread with butter melted into the nooks and crannies…mmmmmm! Happy National Bread and Butter Day!
If bread and butter doesn’t float your happy boat, it’s also Baklava Day and Hike Day.
Poetry Challenge #218
Gorge Yourself . . . First
This is indeed a day worth celebrating because no matter which of the three Bs you choose —Bread, Butter, or Baklava—you can work it off with the H word—or if anyone says you shouldn’t, tell them to Take a Hike! So, let’s celebrate with a 4-way poem.
Use all of these words (homemade bread, butter, baklava, and hike) in a rhyming poem—either an AABB rhyme scheme or an ABAB rhyme scheme.
Let us feel and see and smell this poem!
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 2000+ 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 #217-I'll Be True As Long As . . .
Getting forgetful? I am. So I’m keeping this short and sweet in hopes it will help us remember for that’s what today, National Forget Me Not Day (Nov 10th) is all about: Not Forgetting.
The Alpine Forget Me Not is the Alaskan state flower, chosen in 1917 for it’s “true blue” color. That term “true blue” originally comes from the indigo-dyed cloth made in Coventry, England in the Middle Ages, reported not to fade, but rather to keep its “true” color no matter how many times it was washed. And from that beginning, the term came to mean people who are “always the same and like themselves”—true blue.
Poetry Challenge #217
I’ll be True as Long as You . . .
Go back, back, far as you can remember to one true-blue friend from your past. Or that someone to whom you have been a true-blue friend. Using a truly blue pen, pencil, or crayon, write that person’s name vertically down the center of a paper.
Write an acrostic poem about that true-blue person, a true-blue moment, or qualities that make them true-blue. As you write, fill in the lines on either side of the letters, so when the poem is finished, that person’s name with remain steadfastly in the middle.
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 2000+ 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 #216-Hold the Pickles
Sandwiches are easy take-along foods and can be customized to any person’s liking. Dress them up with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions. Add condiments like mayo, mustard, pesto. Use your favorite cheese: cheddar, American, Swiss, provolone, muenster. And bread: white, wheat, rye, pumpernickel, sub roll. And just before you take that first bite, raise your sandwich high and cheer: “Here’s to the Earl of Sandwich!” because legend has it, we have John Montagu, 4th of Earl Sandwich to thank for the name because Montagu, known to be a rake and gambler, in 1762 once spent 24 hours at a gaming table and all he ate the whole time was meat stuff held in place with slices of bread to keep his fingers and the cards clean. Happy National Sandwich Day (Nov 3)!
Poetry Challenge #216
Hold the Pickles
Today, write a take-along poem. Each stanza will be 3 lines long.
The first and third are the bread and should be 8 words/syllables long.
The middle line is the filling and should be 5 words/syllables.
If you center your poem, it should look like a sandwich!
Make it a picnic and write 3 or more stanzas!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Hungry for more? Watch the short comedy by Daniel Inglese & Joe Coen
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 . . .
