Tis the season in which we think of gifts and try to remember that some can be light enough to slip in a pocket, pure pleasure to track down and pass along. Gift Tag is a digital collection brought together in such a spirit, compiled by Sylvia Vardell, who can track down everything you need to know about poetry for children and teens (click on her ( Read more... )

Last weekend some friends and I went to a poetry workshop sponsored by Straw Dog Writers Guild . Diana Gordon, author most recently of Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible, and Patricia Lee Lewis have led many workshops, and both their friendship and long practice writing and teaching poetry gave us an afternoon that was organized while still ( Read more... )

Teachers, sometimes feeling awkward, sometimes blasé, ask our students to do things we find impossible. In my writing for children class, we cover a form every week, so students leap between writing parts of novels and chapter books to poetry and picture book manuscripts. Sometimes I remind them to be kind to themselves by remembering that the ( Read more... )

Last night I had dinner with friends, one of whom is moving. She told us that so far she has a grip on packing well-labeled boxes, though she knows soon she’ll come to tossing things randomly into IKEA bags.  The other friend said she’d heard a good way to pack is by labeling according to where stuff came from. That is the cupboard left of the ( Read more... )

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Peter and I recently spent two days near the New Hampshire coast, then drove back home by way of Derry, to see The Robert Frost Farm. Like the Frost Place in Franconia and the Stone House near Bennington, Vermont, which we visited earlier this year, this farmhouse was full of inspiration. Robert and Elinor Frost raised four children here from 1900 ( Read more... )

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Last weekend my husband and I celebrated our anniversary at Lake Winnipesaukee. It was too chilly and rainy to be on the lake; we stuck to watching loons and herons. We toured Canterbury Shaker Village.


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I’ve cut a swathe through the life of a historical figure, written an almost 200 page draft I’m sending to my writing group and Peter to see if the narrative running through make sense. The poems are honed down and have some good imagery, but I’ll want to know which images might be toned down or tossed, and which developed. While the manuscript is ( Read more... )

 
Approaching Ice by Elizabeth Bradfield (Persea Books) is a wonderful collection of poems about exploration of the polar regions from past to present, and reflections on why some are drawn to ice, danger, or spareness. You get a taste of one answer in the poem below, which focuses on some of what was saved when Ernest Shackleton failed to reach the ( Read more... )