Poetry Challenge #96: Hot Diggity Dog!
Hot Diggity Dog! It’s National Hot Dog Day! July 17th)! An entire day officially dedicated to gobbling hot dogs. This is your chance, you can fire up the BBQ, grill up a mess of fat/calorie/nitrate packed hot dogs, nestle them in buttery toasted buns, slather them with tasty toppings and gobble away or you can take the challenge (or both):
Poetry Challenge #96
Hot Diggity-Dog
In honor of National Hot Dog Day, let’s write a concrete poem. Concrete poems are words arranged in a shape to give extra meaning to the subject of the poem. Maybe the words form the branches of a tree or letters drip down the page to show rain. Sometimes there’s a surprise hidden in repeated words like the marshmallow in the concrete poem below created by Cindy*.
For this one step grab an old-school writing implement (aka pencil, marker, pen). Unless you’re a “Cindy”, it’s harder to create a concrete poem on a device. Begin by visualizing a hot dog. Now, to turn it into a concrete poem you can:
Sketch the outline of a hot dog and fill it by writing hot dog hot dog hot dog over and over and over . . . until you are fed up with writing hot dog.
Or, fill your hot dog outline with a poem about hot dogs or a hot dog memory.
Or, draw a hot dog with words associated with hot dogs.
Or, use letters as Cindy did by using hot dog part words to create an image. Use other words to dress up your hot dog. Do you like ketchup? Mustard? Onions? Chili? Sweet relish? Marshmallows?
Grab Your Marker
Get Set
Hog-Diggity Draw! (I do relish a good concrete poem…with mustard.)
Got Kids? Get ROAR! a delightful new (free) magazine for kids featuring Poetry Lab, poetry prompts co-created by us*, just for kids.
*Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 3 years ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
