Poetry Challenge #15 Ring My Bell
Channelling Zuzu and Anita Ward today—
(although I can not for the life of me see why Patti Labelle hasn’t busted out with her own version.
RING-A-DING DING!
“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”
Everyone knows the refrain to Anita Ward’s hit Ring My Bell, but do you recall how it starts?
I'm glad you're home
Now, did you really miss me?
I guess
You did by the look in your eyes
Look in your eyes, look in your eyes
Well, lay back and relax
While I put away the dishes
Put away the dishes
Then you and me
Can rock-a-bye
Poetry Challenge #15
Ring My Bell!
Bells come in many shapes and sizes, with so many different uses, and sounds!
Begin by listing as many bells as come to mind. Here are a few to get you started: Sleigh bells, steeple bells, harness bells, doorbells, elf shoe bells, cow bells, Santa’s bells . . .
Next, list the different sounds those bells make. List real words and make up your own words by using letters to recreate sounds—after all this is your bell. Does it bong? Ring-a-ling? Clink?
Now, follow Zuzu’s lead and imagine what magical thing might happen each time your bell rings?
Write a poem about it. Be sure to include those sounds. Make your poem really ring!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Is this the caller to whom I am speaking??
?
Do those words ring a bell?
First one who can tell me who used to say that—every week—wins!
Post your answer in the comments (below).
Bell Ringers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to be there with them? Great upper body workout!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2800+ 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 #14-Remember First
Do you remember the first of something in your life?
Maybe you remember the first time you rode a bike,
the first time you visited someone by yourself, or the first time you went somewhere by yourself.
Maybe you have early memories of learning to read, like our friend Rain!
Or writing or hiking.
Or learning to play basketball, like Aiden!
or drive a car…not like Aiden!
Who did these things with you?
Where were you?
What did you like?
What feelings do you remember?
Poetry Challenge #14
Remember First . . .
Make a list of anything you remember about some first event.
The more things you write down, the more you’ll remember.
Add detail and play with the words and order to make the best poem you can.
Try to repeat sounds for effect.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
For inspiration a few songs to rev up your rememberer:
And—how could I not!—the commercial: Times of Your Life sung by Paul Anka
Baby you can drive my car! And Baby I love you! Beep-Beep-n-Beep-Beep YEAH!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2800+ 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 #11-Spring Fling
Spring is busting out all over! Crocus and daffs are blooming, birds are twittering, bees are buzzing…
About those bees!!!
Public service announcement: Enjoy the dandelions—but don’t pull or mow them yet. Dandelions are one of the first, the only sources of food for bees in early spring.
For that matter: let all those dried up sticks and twigs and dried grasses in your flower beds BE for now—UNTIL THE TEMPERATURES RISE ABOVE 50!
Ladybugs are sleeping in those stems, so are other pollinators. Give them a chance to wake up and shake the dust of winter from their weensy wings and FLY! …they’ll still be time to clean up the yard.
Spring is early this year, too, weather-wise and calendar wise.
Leap year is one reason for it, but only one.
Like all things pertaining to change and growth and love and roses . . .
Blame it on the moon!
Poetry Challenge #11
Spring Fling
A funny thing about spring—Flowers and bees aside—Spring is fickle. Poetically speaking, it can never seem to make up its mind. Sometimes Spring is a noun. Sometimes its a verb. Sometimes an adjective. And, even, when whimsy and wit or dimwit wills, an adverb.
For this poem, let’s embrace Spring in all it’s fickle forms by writing a spring poem using the word spring at least once as every part of speech you can: noun, verb, adjective, adverb—more power to you if you can figure out how to work Spring into a prepositional position.
And, because what would spring be without birds, bees, and the moon, work them in your poem, too!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 #10-And To Think That I Saw It!
I spend a lot of time looking down…at my keyboard, a page…on walks, my feet.
All that is about to change, if only for a short while today. So plant your feet safely and then proceed—without caution!
Recently, in light of our collective efforts to be more culturally sensitive, this book (which was brought to mind by the title of this prompt) is being banned because a mural in the Dr. Suess Museum depicted a scene from this book has been deemed racist. The mural, or that section of the mural, is being replaced.
I am not sure where this leaves this first book by the beloved Dr. Seuss. To read or not to read it, is a question for you to decide. To ban it is shut the door on an important conversation.
(As Theo is long gone, he can't weigh in on the discussion.)
Here’s a more PC journey PB
* NY Time Bestseller
* Newbury Award Winner
* Caldecott Honor
* Coretta Scott King Honor
Now that you’ve been a bit of a flaneur (that’s Fancy Nancy for idle wanderer) on to the prompt!
Poetry Challenge #10
And To Think That I Saw it!
List 10 or more things you saw on the bus or in the car —through the window—on your way to work or school.
Or take a walk and list things you see.
Pick 5 of the things and put one on each line. Add detail, simile, or metaphor:
It ____________looks like a___________ .
It is as _________ as a ________.
It is a ______________.
Read the five lines. Try moving some lines around to get it in a better order or change some words to make it rhyme (or not rhyme) or sound better.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
NOW! In the “oh so cool” words of Nancy Sinatra: COME ON BOOTS! START WALKING! Dah-dah-dah-DUH . . .
This photo of the grands on a walk is my screensaver. Imagine how that walk went!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 #8-Moonlight in Vermont
Confession Time: Somedays--many days--I am not in "the mood" to be poetic.
Today's prompt is exactly perfect for one of those days.
(Can't take credit for it, this was Cindy's idea.)
Here goes:
Poetry Challenge #8
Moonlight in Vermont
Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry made up of 3 lines with 5/7/5 syllables on each line. Traditional haiku has something to do with nature, but you can write them about anything.
Whenever I groan “I can’t write a Haiku… it’s hard…”
Cindy reminds me how, rhythmically, syllabically, miraculously, the first three lines of the song “Moonlight in Vermont” make a perfect haiku. That gets me humming every time.
If you know the song (or at least the tune), you can write haiku very quickly by putting your own words to the tune. Here’s a link to Willie Nelson singing “Moonlight in Vermont”
How many haiku can you write in 7 minutes?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 #7-Mixing it UP!
In a recent “Chat” to her band of merry (and sometimes not) writers—of which I’m happy to be included—Book Doctor, Robyn Conley, wrote suggesting how, especially in difficult times, we could and should encourage kindness.
To that end, she asked us to share stories of times when we entered a situation or encountered a person with one belief and came away with another.
Has that ever happened to you?
It has me.
“Diversity: “The condition of having or being composed of differing elements :variety; especially: the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization.”
— https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity
Poetry Challenge #7
Mixing it UP
For today’s challenge, look around your space and pick out two completely different objects (or people).
Write a poem that begins with the differences between the two, and end by exploring how they are the same.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 #6-I Am The One Who ____
If you, like me, get songs stuck in your brain, please forgive me in advance.
The moment I read this prompt a Toby Keith song popped into my head (RIP Toby), I Wanna Talk About Me, the one about the guy who really likes to hear every-single-teeny-itsy-detail of his gal's life, but Occasionally...
So, here's your chance:
Poetry Challenge #6
I'm The One Who ___
Write a list poem.
What is it you do?
What makes you you?
(Or because it is Valentine’s Day, if you usually do most/all of the talking, write it about your sweetie!)
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
And because, regardless of his politics, Toby Keith sang some great songs, in memory here’s the Link to I Want to Talk About Me.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 #5-What's that noise?
A poll of incredibly interested 2,3 & 4 year-olds revealed noteworthy data: Their favorite part of my picture book, Not Norman, A Goldfish Story, was:
—Not the spunky main character…
—Not the brilliant story…
—Not Noah Z. Jones delightful pictures…
—NOT . . . NORMAN ???
It was the dark page toward the end of the story when our tad-bit-scared boy says . . .
If your tots haven't read this book, they are missing out--and so are you! Buy It!
"What's that noise?"
Prompted by certain sounds, our minds take us places--interesting, provocative, visceral...scary places. Which leads me to this week's prompt. Let's use sounds to mess around with readers minds--and make our poetry...well...Sing!
Poetry Challenge #5
What's That Noise?
Take a walk—around your house, a store, the school, or your neighborhood.
Write a poem about it. But, rather than focusing on what you see, focus on what you hear.
Extra points for using an onomatopoeia—or a few. In case you forgot: that’s a words that sound like the sound of the object it’s describing.
For inspiration here’s a poem chock full of sounds: A Sound Collector by Roger McGough
“A Sound Collector
A stranger called this morning
Dressed all in black and grey
Put every sound into a bag
And carried them away
The whistling of the kettle
The turning of the lock
The purring of the kitten
The ticking of the clock
The popping of the toaster
The crunching of the flakes
When you spread the marmalade
The scraping noise it makes
The hissing of the frying pan
The ticking of the grill
The bubbling of the bathtub
As it starts to fill
The drumming of the raindrops
On the windowpane
When you do the washing-up
The gurgle of the drain
The crying of the baby
The squeaking of the chair
The swishing of the curtain
The creaking of the stair
A stranger called this morning
He didn’t leave his name
Left us only silence
Life will never be the same”
Set the timer for 7 minutes
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2700+ 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 . . .