Generations
What is worth keeping? What is worth passing on? Those are some of the questions stirred up by today’s collected poems. I haven’t decided yet if the poem I post to LexPoMo today will be fresh as the dew or one of the poems I hoarded just to share this month. I also have many…
Read More
Honeysuckle
There are many things to love about #LexPoMo, but one of the best things is how diving into my morning’s poetry tasting always inspires me to write. One of the things that is the most frustrating is the sheer volume and pace of poetry added to our collection. This morning, the third morning, we are…
Read More
Mushrooms
What special powers do you possess? What are the important lessons you overlooked in the moment? What haunts you? What do you remember? Caught in this moment between the end of the school year and the start of Write Across America, the Just Write Virtual Writing Group (aka the Rebel Cartographers) brings poems to the…
Read More
Are you even?
What equations do you need to solve? What needs evening in your life? What transformations have you walked through? Last week the Just Write Virtual Writing Group (aka the Rebel Cartographers) brought poems to the group for our writing inspiration and we enjoyed that so much we decided to repeat it again this week. Here…
Read More
What voyages shaped you?
What memories of love both lost and cherished can you write about? What has tried to kill you and failed? What voyages have shaped you? As I was still in recovery mode after the end of the semester, I did not prepare a writing invitation for the Just Write Virtual Writing Group (aka the Rebel…
Read More
Crosscurrent
A crosscurrent is a conflicting tendency or movement or turbulent stretch. The Just Write Virtual Writing Group chose to name our 2023 poetry anthology Crosscurrent because it seemed such an apt description for the content and tone of our poetry as well as the times that inspired them. The order of our poems in this…
Read More
Reflection Poems
What do you discover in the chaos? What creases have been made on your brain? What is something others should know? What truth dazzles you? The very last thing my students and I do together as a writing community is to reflect on our journey together as a community of writers, learners, and humans. While…
Read More
What conversation do you want to have?
One of the final tasks I have for my students this semester is to create a project that is both delightful and thought-provoking. We began our brainstorming as we begin each class session: with this simple sentence stem I Am A Writer From… where students are invited to write and share what is heavy on their hearts…
Read More
Reflecting on the World
What change do you want to see in the world? What solution do you wish for the problem that most weighs on your heart and mind? As my first year writers wrap up their good faith arguments we engaged with two poems to bring those arguments to a conclusion and reflect on their journey as writers. What…
Read More
What Needs Fixing?
What needs fixing in your life? What tools do you need to make those repairs? For two weeks my first year writers have been preparing to write their own good faith arguments by first writing about the problems we encounter in our daily lives as move about our communities and then digging into those problems by exploring the…
Read More