Category: poetry

Posted in poetry, St Thomas' Primary School

Celebrating Australia — with poetry!

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

We recently interviewed Lorraine Marwood about writing Celebrating Australia: A Year in Poetry. (You can WIN your very own copy of the book, too!)

celebrating australia: a year in poetry (cover)

To launch the book, Lorraine spent last week visiting bookish blogs. She also asked each blog host to write a poem based on a poem from her collection.

Here is Lorraine’s poem:

SEASONS — AUTUMN

Autumn is loud crushing sounds
a foot scuffing rap-tapping shuffle.
One day a light dusting
of pathway obstruction
by week’s end a whole mound
of slip, slide, crunch, crackle.

Autumn is loud splashing colours
a yellow, rust, tangerine explosion.
One day a brightness in twos, threes
of pathway palette,
by week’s end a whole Monet mosaic
of buffs, shades, tints and silhouettes.

© Lorraine Marwood

Today the Year 5 students at St Thomas’ Primary School in Claremont (WA) take up the challenge. They worked in small groups to create their poems, either using the patterning of Lorraine’s poem (find the template here), or loosely inspired by the poem.

Sit back and enjoy a poetry feast!

—

Spring Poem
by Minerva and Abbey

Spring is the chirping of the bluebirds
the gentle buzzing of the bees,
one day lush blossoms bloom,
By week’s end parks full of floral outbreak
swish, sway, tweet, twirl

Spring is the soft pastel colours
peach, moss and baby blue
One day a lavender, honeysuckle eruption
blows over the garden’s greenery,
By week’s end the radiant colours have
created a glowing canvas

—

A Day of Winter
by Yasmin

Winter is twigs snapping,
The howling of the wind
And the roar of a blazing fire.

One day there is pelting rain,
Across the Australian plains.
The smell of the soft brown earth fills the air.

A pitter patter, a splish splash,
And a clash of the mighty thunder.

The crackling of the burning logs,
The sprinkle on the roof.
And the rage of the mighty storm.

A thick mist covers the land,
And onto the window panes,
As the smoke curls from the chimney tops.

A swish, a sway, a crackle,
And a snap, goes the icy bush.

—

Wing (winter and spring crossed)
By Sophie and Amy

Winter is a loud bang of lightning
A drip drop of rain from the pipes
One day a storm accrued
In the scrapers
A mud pit
Of slip slide crash!

A dark ash grey in the sky
A livid blue and a deep muddy brown
One day spring did come
In the big city
By week’s end a rainbow of colour
Of blues, greens and browns

—

Two Sides of Summer Poem!
By Jemima

Sizzling, crackling sausages on the barbecue,
Pop fizz the icy Coke explodes as it drizzles down the can,
One day in my backyard running under the sprinklers,
Splash splosh as I dive into the cold pool,
Mangoes, oranges, and watermelon as it drips down my face,
Split, chop, squeeze, chomp
Fresh fruit salad, enjoy it, it’s not a race!

The hot sand beneath my toes,
The mums having a cocktail under a shady umbrella,
One day dads fishing at the end of a jetty,
While the children are eating yummy strawberry ice-cream,
Bounce, crash, cheers, cling,
It’s the last day of summer!

—

Summer
By Joshua, Oscar, Euan and Patrick

Summer is a splash of joy, with the boom of the ball and the crack of the bat
of the back yard cricket game.
By the burning hot late night barbie.
A bright sunny yellow day.
A lush blue sky and the scorching hot sand.
Green grass swishing from side to side.
One day a boy named Kent decided to fly in the summer breeze, he jumped
and he flew like a boy in the hot summer wind.

—

Christmas in Australia
By Finn, Dylan and Gerry

Christmas in Australia is the crash of the ball hitting the wicket,
The sizzling of the sausages and
The crashing waves
Kookaburras are laughing and children are unwrapping presents
People eat turkey, lamb and pork at Christmas lunch
Christmas in Australia is full of blue sky and the yellow sun
Weeks after Christmas people are playing with their new toys,
and over on the other side of the world children are playing by the fire or in the snow
And back on Christmas Day people are swimming in the pool and having icy poles
Christmas in Australia is having lots of fun in the sun

—

Summer in Australia
By Ella, Emily and Charlotte

Summer is the sound of people bombing
into the pool,
the sizzle of the barbecue,
The crash of the waves,
Rays of sunlight burn your skin
On the beach playing cricket
Slurp, chirp, pop goes the weasel

Sunsets burn the sky with colour
a splash of colour on the ocean
The sea is emerald and sapphire blue,
sun shines on the Sydney Opera House

—

Things We Do in Summer
By Will and Tom

Waves crashing sun tanning
People surfing the world
Flip flops flapping sand crushing
Sun burning
Pool party’s water balloons
Pebble skimming and pineapple eating
Smoothie sipping water splashing
Movie watching boat riding

Fish catching
People diving
People baking under the sun
Ducks quacking
Seagulls squawking
Crabs crawling
Cuttlefish crunching
These are the things we do in summer

Sun rising
Sun setting
Going around the world
Sand castle building
Sausages sizzling
Sand boarding
Bicycle riding
These are the things we do in SUMMER!

—

This is the LAST STOP on Lorraine Marwood’s blog tour to launch Celebrating Australia: A Year in Verse. You can check out the rest of the tour (and the poems at each stop) here:

Blog tour dates and links:

2 March Jackie Hosking:  Topic: What makes a good poem ( according to LM)+ GIVEAWAY.

3 March Kathryn Apel:  Topic: Bringing a poetry collection together.

4 March Rebecca Newman: Topic: Research for poetry writers.

5 March Claire Saxby:  Topic: Inside this collection.

6 March Janeen Brian:  Topic: How you create for the creators: how you create ideas to excite children and adults to write poems of their own.

9 March Alphabet Soup:  Topic: Writing a class poem — the results! + GIVEAWAY. [You’re here!]

Posted in Book reviews by Joseph, Book reviews by kids, poetry

Book review: Celebrating Australia: A Year in Poetry

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

Celebrating Australia: A Year in Poetry by Lorraine Marwood, Walker Books Australia, ISBN 9781925081022

celebrating australia: a year in poetry (cover)

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH, 11, WA

Joseph reviewed his own copy of this book.

I like poetry collections where the poems are connected by a theme — in this book the poems are all about key events in the year. I didn’t know of a few events before I read the poems (like Diwali — Festival of Light). Australia has lots of people from different countries and I like to learn about the different celebrations and important events. Chinese New Year, Australia Day, Christmas, Pancake Day (the start of Lent), Ramadan and heaps more.

My favourite poems in this collection:

‘A Recipe for Harmony Day’

At our school we always do a lot of activities for Harmony Day. At the school in the poem they do different activities with food so the kids in the class can try out foods from different countries. I like the way the poem sounds, and I like the humour in it (like the toasted marshmallows).

‘Graduation’

I’m thinking about graduation this year because I’m in year 6 and graduation is coming up for me at the end of the year. I really like the last three lines in this poem. And I like that the whole poem is like a little list.

‘Swimming Carnival’

I like the rhythm of it, and the repetition of the last line in each stanza makes me imagine I’m there with everyone being excited and preparing for the day. (The swimming carnival is a big deal).

There is a mix of simple drawings and photographs with the poems, they’re all black and white. Celebrating Australia: A Year in Poetry is fun to read aloud to other people and a good summary of a year. In your class you could probably read a poem aloud when an event comes up.

I would recommend this book to children aged 8 to 12.

© February 2015 “Review of Celebrating Australia: A Year in Poetry” by Joseph.
(https://soupblog.wordpress.com)

—

Alphabet Soup talked to Lorraine Marwood recently about writing Celebrating Australia: a Year in Poetry. You can read the interview here.

Joseph is one of our regular book reviewers. His most recent review (if you don’t count this one) was of The Billy That Died With Its Boots On. If YOU would like to send us a book review, check out our submission guidelines. Happy reading!

Posted in poetry

Write 31 poems in 31 days!

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

Month of Poetry is run by children’s writer Kathryn Apel and is open to anyone — children and adults — anywhere in the world. Aim to write one poem per day during January and at the end of the month you’ll have a drawer full of new poems.

If you register at the Month of Poetry site (it’s free to register), Kathryn will send you a password. The poem pages are not open to the public, so only participants with the password will be able to see poems, post their own poems, and add comments. Once a week there will be a specific poetry challenge (e.g. a theme or an image) posted to the site. If you have registered, you can use the password to post your poem for that day onto the locked pages, and you can read other participant’s poems … and comment on them if you like.

Of course, you don’t need to sign up to the website to write a poem a day … you can just quietly (or loudly) write a poem every day in January anyway. But if you’d like a bit of encouragement, then the Month of Poetry site is a great way to get your writing kickstarted for 2015.

To find out more about the Month of Poetry, (or to sign up) head over to the Month of Poetry website!

But BEWARE: THE LAST DAY YOU CAN REGISTER is Tuesday 30th December 2014. That’s TODAY! (Children who want to take part will need an adult to register them. Happy writing!)

Posted in poetry, Soup Blog Poetry Festival

Time for a poem: The Electric Fence

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

The Electric Fence

by Veronica Hester

 

Imagine the tragedy that
Had befallen me
The boomerang flung through the air
No, it didn’t hit me
I walked through the long grass
No, a snake didn’t bite me
The sunset was blooming
The boys were on their gleaming motorbikes
No, they didn’t run me over
But the noise should’ve killed me.

I took it all in
Smiling, breathing
And leaned on the fence
Right in front of me
I, of course, had forgotten
That I was on a farm
And when fences are silver
You don’t lean on them.

And that’s why I don’t lean on fences.
Ever.

—

This poem was the winner of our 2014 poetry competition. For more writing competitions for kids, check out our Comps for Kids page.

Posted in poetry

The winner of Alphabet Soup’s 2014 poetry comp

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

Thank you to all the young poets who entered our 2014 Poetry Competition. We were blown away by the quality of your poems and our judge (Rebecca Newman) had a very hard time choosing one winner. Rebecca did have a fabulous time reading all your poems!

The winners:

1st place — $30 book voucher

‘The Electric Fence’ by Veronica Hester, 11, NSW

Judge’s comments: This free-verse poem crafted a clear scene for the audience. Effective use of repetition builds anticipation and the voice of the storyteller is engaging. What is not said (but left to our imagination) adds an amusing layer to the poem.

2nd place

‘Sounds of the Night’ by Jamie D’Mello, 7, WA

Highly Commended

‘The Dark Clown’ by Meg Edelman, 12, WA

—

Certificates (and first prize) will be posted out to these poets at the end of the week. Don’t go away! We’ll post Veronica’s winning poem here on the blog later today …

Posted in poetry, Soup Blog Poetry Festival

What does a commissioning editor do?

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

Dianne (Di) Bates has published 120+ books mostly for young readers. Some of her books have won children’s choice book awards. Di is a former teacher, schools’ performer and newspaper editor, and has worked as an editor on three children’s magazines. In 2008, Di was awarded The Lady Cutler Award for distinguished services to children’s Literature. Di lives near Wollongong, NSW, Australia, with her prize-winning YA author husband, Bill Condon.

Di Bates and Bill Condon
Di Bates and Bill Condon

Di is visiting Alphabet Soup today to tell us about a new anthology of children’s poetry coming out in 2016!

You are the commissioning editor for a poetry anthology for children coming out with Walker Books. What was your role in the book?
I spent many hours finding poems which were written by Australians and which would suit the themes I’d decided on for the anthology (such as sport, families, being a kid). I had to record the source of each poem (if it was in a single poet collection, an anthology, a magazine or if it was unpublished). I also tracked down contact addresses of the poets, gave the anthology a title (Our Home is Dirt by Sea) and then had to find a publisher for the whole anthology. This all sounds easy, but it took me several years.

Note: A poetry collection is written by a single poet; an anthology contains poems by numerous poets.

There are a lot of poems in an anthology. Do all the poets get paid if they have a poem published in an anthology?
Yes, poets are paid. As the editor, I get paid, as well. Unfortunately the publisher couldn’t include all the poems I wanted, because of financial limitations.

Does an editor ever change the words in a poem once it’s accepted for an anthology? Does the poet have a say in any changes?
I would never change the words — or the punctuation — in a poem without approval from the poet. I didn’t change any of the poems in my anthology.

Can you tell us a bit about the upcoming anthology?
Titled Our Home is Dirt by Sea, the anthology consists of 60 poems in the following categories: Australia, Mostly Me, Families, People, Animals, Sport, School, and Special Times. A few of the poems are lyrical, some make children think and some are humorous, but all are child-friendly and relatively short. The style of poems ranges from rhyming verse to free verse. I aimed for poems which make the reader feel some emotion when reading them, and for children to ‘see’ themselves or the world around them. Some of the poets are well-known such as Steven Herrick, Elizabeth Honey, Doug McLeod and Max Fatchen, but others are lesser known (to children) such as Robert Adamson, Kyle Seeburg, Andrew Leggett and Rodney Hall.

I have also compiled two other children’s poetry anthologies, but they are so far unpublished. And I’ve published a book of mad verse for children titled Erky Perky Silly Stuff (Five Senses Education).

erky perky silly stuff

Do you write poetry yourself? (Does that help when you are selecting poems for an anthology?)
Yes, I do write poems, but I don’t consider myself a very good poet. There are none of my poems in Our Home is Dirt by Sea, though there are a few by my husband, Bill Condon (who has published three collections). I know a lot about poetry from having a life-long love of poetry, teaching verse speaking, performing poetry and reading extensively. I’ve also run children’s poetry competitions and have a blog, Australian Children’s Poetry which showcases Australian children’s poets.

—

Keep an eye out for Our Home is Dirt by Sea in 2016! And you can find out more about Di Bates on her website: www.enterprisingwords.com.au.

Interview with Di Bates © November 2014 Di Bates & Rebecca Newman
Posted in poetry, Soup Blog Poetry Festival

Time for a poem: The Way Through the Woods

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

The Way Through the Woods

by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

Posted in poetry, Soup Blog Poetry Festival

Chat with a poet: Lorraine Marwood

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

We’re very pleased to have Lorraine Marwood visiting us at Alphabet Soup today. Lorraine writes verse novels and poetry collections for children and she has a new poetry collection coming out in 2015. Here’s the cover in all its glory!

Celebrating Australia

Your earlier poetry collections have themes (‘notes’ and ‘animals’). Does your upcoming collection have a theme?

Yes my new book does have a theme — ‘Celebrations!’ And the title reflects this. Celebrating Australia: a year in poetry.

When you were writing poems for this collection , did you set out to write to a particular theme? Or did a theme emerge?

Yes the theme began the collection and I began to research those celebrations that I had little first hand knowledge about — the journey was fascinating.

How long did it take you to finish this book?

About 18 months, some poems had to be re-written completely to suit the overall nature of the collection.

How do you choose which poems to include (and which poems to leave out) for a collection?

Ah, a good question. I wrote in batches — for example I researched ideas and words for the Valentine’s day poem and after the initial draft my editor suggested it needed to be more grounded in what kids might do — this is where a refrain came in to make the poem flow:  ‘cutie pie, cutie pie, my high five, be mine forever.’ It was hard trying to make something like Bastille day or United Nations day poetic. My editor suggested significant milestone celebrations in the Australian calendar and I chose some myself like ‘International dot day’ and ‘Talk like a pirate day.’

I tried to make a variety of formats for the poems, including some with refrains, even one that rhymes, some humourous, some grounded in image and emotion.

Do you have a tip for young writers who want to try writing in free verse?

I think a good way to begin is to think of using images. Here’s an example. Let’s liken the sky to:

a crinkle of aluminum foil or a smudge of vanilla yoghurt.

It can be set out like this:

Today
the sky is like a crinkle of aluminum foil

Have a go! Look at the sky right now and think of an object or a colour in your fridge or kitchen and liken the sky to that — it will make the sky more visual, more sensory, more striking for the reader and that’s what we want, to be different and move away from cliché. Sometimes rhyming leads us into cliché.

Lorraine Marwood
Lorraine Marwood, reading Guinea Pig Town to some of her grandchildren.

Is there anything else you can tell us about Celebrating Australia: a year in poetry?

I loved the hard work put into my collection by my editor and the final finishing touches by graphic designer Amy Daoud. For me each poem was a mini story in itself — with its own research, own format, own rhythm and own beginning and end. I learnt so much about other culture’s celebrations and embraced the whole multi-cultural feel of Australia right now.

I am planning for a launch with the Bendigo, Goldfields library in February, can’t wait!

—

To find out more about Lorraine Marwood and her poetry and books, visit her website. And check out our other interviews with Lorraine here and here.

Interview with Lorraine Marwood © November 2014 Lorraine Marwood & Rebecca Newman

 

Posted in poetry, Soup Blog Poetry Festival

Time for a poem: A Day in Bed

Posted on by Alphabet Soup

A Day in Bed

by Katherine Mansfield

I wish I had not got a cold,
The wind is big and wild,
I wish that I was very old,
Not just a little child.

Somehow the day is very long
Just keeping here, alone;
I do not like the big wind’s song,
He’s growling for a bone.

He’s like an awful dog we had
Who used to creep around
And snatch at things — he was so bad,
With just that horrid sound.

I’m sitting up and nurse has made
Me wear a woolly shawl;
I wish I was not so afraid;
It’s horrid to be small.

It really feels quite like a day
Since I have had my tea;
P’r’aps everybody’s gone away
And just forgotten me.

And oh! I cannot go to sleep
Although I am in bed.
The wind keeps going creepy-creep
And waiting to be fed.

—

 

We’re sharing this poem as part of Alphabet Soup’s Poetry Festival. Do you think you could write your own poem about feeling scared? Sure you could! And then enter it in our 2014 kids’ writing comp — entries close 25 November 2014.