2 for 1 Giveaway: A Set of Metaphor Dice and a copy of the Poetry by Chance Anthology

Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? See this page for info.) 

Today we have a special treat for all our followers who are fans of metaphor and/or poetry, and especially for those of you who teach writing.

I mentioned in my June 16 post that we'd be hosting a giveaway of Poetry by Chance: An Anthology of Poems Powered by Metaphor Dice edited by Taylor Mali (Button Poetry). Well, Taylor surprised me by sending not only a copy of the book autographed to "a fan of TeachingAuthors" but by also including a set of Metaphor Dice for the giveaway.

I include instructions on how to enter the giveaway for this fun prize duo at the end of this post. But first, I want to share a bit about the anthology and give you a sneak preview of my poem that appears in it.

As it says in the book's description: "Poetry By Chance is the first collection of poems that were all prompted by different rolls of Metaphor Dice, featuring submitters from the inaugural Golden Die Contest." But that description fails to note that the anthology includes poems from young people, ages 10 and up, as well as adults. The book also contains a section devoted to Lesson Plans using Metaphor Dice to inspire writers of all ages. 

Poetry by Chance will be released Tuesday, July 11, 2023. Taylor Mali will be celebrating with a free book launch the following Friday, July 14, at Brooklyn Poets, 144 Montague St, Brooklyn, NY. If you're in Brooklyn, I hope you'll attend in person. If not, you can participate virtually instead. But either way, you must register in advance to attend, which you can do so here. 

Even though the book isn't officially out till next week, I have received permission to share my poem with you today. As I mentioned last time, the poem was inspired by these dice:

 Here's the poem:

     WHAT IT MEANS TO FORGET

      For some,
      forgetting is a gentle blessing
      providing absolution
      and forgiveness of sins.

      For me,
      forgetting is a harbinger of death,
      bearing the image of my grandmother—
      her brown eyes blank, blinking—
      unable to remember my name.

© 2023 Carmela A. Martino, Published in Poetry by Chance: An Anthology of Poems Powered by Metaphor Dice edited by Taylor Mali (Button Poetry). All rights reserved.  

In my last post, I mentioned that I first learned of the anthology from a Poetry Friday post by Heidi Mordhorst, and that my poem follows one of two of Heidi's that appear in the book. I neglected to say that the Lesson Plan section in the back of Poetry by Chance includes a contribution by Margaret Simon, another Poetry Friday regular. Margaret shares a fun way she uses Metaphor Dice to teach students about figurative language. It's lovely to have my poem in such great company!

Speaking of Poetry Friday, after you enter our giveaway below, be sure to visit this week's Poetry Friday round up hosted by Marcie Flinchum Atkins. 

And now for our giveaway!

. . . . . .

To enter the drawing to win a copy of Poetry by Chance: An Anthology of Poems Powered by Metaphor Dice edited by Taylor Mali (Button Poetry) AND a set of Metaphor Dice, use the Rafflecopter widget below. (Note: if the widget doesn't appear, click on the link at the end of this post that says "a Rafflecopter giveaway" to enter.)

You may enter via up to 5 options. The more options you choose, the better your odds!

If you choose option 4, you MUST leave a comment on TODAY’S blog post or on our TeachingAuthors Facebook page. If you haven’t already “liked” our Facebook page, please do so today!

If you prefer, you may submit your comment via email to: teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com.

Note: if you submit your comments via email or Facebook, YOU MUST STILL ENTER THE DRAWING VIA RAFFLECOPTER BELOW.  The giveaway ends July 15, 2023 and is open to U.S. Residents only.

If you’ve never entered a Rafflecopter giveaway, here’s info on how to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway.  And a second article explains the difference between signing in with Facebook vs. with an email address.

Good luck!

Carmela

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

3 Little Words Can Be a Powerful Prompt: Playing with Metaphor Dice

Hi, all! Today I'm wrapping up our series on the subject of Writing Prompts, which April kicked off in this post two months ago. It's been interesting to read the varied responses to the topic from the other TeachingAuthors and some of our followers. Personally, I love prompts, especially because they often take me to unexpected places. At the end of this post, I share a poem inspired by three little words, courtesy of Metaphor Dice.

First, though, I'm pleased to announce that those same three words also inspired a poem that will appear in Poetry by Chance: An Anthology of Poems Powered by Metaphor Dice edited by Taylor Mali (Button Poetry). The book will be released in less than four weeks, on July 11, 2023. And I'm thrilled to say that we'll be offering a giveaway of the book next month, so stay tuned!

I had never heard of Metaphor Dice until reading about them in a post on Heidi Mordhorst's blog. Metaphor Dice were invented by poet and teacher Taylor Mali, who edited the anthology. The official Metaphor Dice website describes them as "The writing tool that plays like a game!" The dice come in three colors and have words printed on them. The words on the red dice are concepts. The white dice contain adjectives, and the blue ones, objects. To play the game, you roll three dice--one of each color--and then use the words to form a metaphor. If you like, you can then expand the metaphor into a poem. If you're not a poet, you might try incorporating the metaphor into an essay or story.

Heidi's post included a link to the Golden Dice contest for Metaphor Dice-inspired poems. (The contest ended April 30, 2022.). Winning poems would then be published in Poetry by Chance.

I couldn't resist trying my hand at using the dice. But crafting a satisfactory poem from the metaphors I came up with proved more challenging than I expected. Here are the three words that finally gave me the inspiration I needed:

 

And here's a draft of one of the poems these words inspired:

            Forget and Forgive

    In the past, I fought against the notion
    that forgetting might be a gentle blessing
    by memorizing my mistakes for quicker recall.

    Now, I’ve come to see that forgetfulness
    can be a way to wipe the slate clean,
    and finally forgive myself. 

 © Draft 2022 Carmela A. Martino. All rights reserved. 

I can't share the poem that made it into Poetry by Chance just yet, but I can tell you that I'm honored to have my work included in the anthology. As it turns out, my poem follows one of two by Heidi Mordhorst! 

Poetry Friday logo by Linda Mitchell

I look forward to saying more about the anthology in next month's giveaway post. Meanwhile, be sure to check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup hosted by Michelle Kogan.  

Carmela

OOPS! IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO POST A POEM

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Howdy, Campers!

Happy Poetry Friday (link to today's host below)! I forgot about posting today. I forgot!

...until my wonderful fellow blogger (our blog's Captain and Queen Mother, Carmela Martino) gently texted, "Everything ok? It's your turn to post and you usually get it done early."

Uh-oh!

And so here we are. Now. And National Poetry Month! I wrote this poem on April 9, 2017, but Carmela helped me through the storm today, so it feels as if I could have written it just now...it's all about now, isn't it? 

TAXI WAITING
by April Halprin Wayland

Night. Storm.

Thunder roars.



I am perched on

our front porch.



Raindrops drum.

Cab has come.



Downpour now is nearly tidal.

Taxi-cab is parked. It idles.



Torrent pours. I droop, I drag.

A plastic bag is all I have.



And then from where?

Someone standing right here.



Umbrella open,

offers arm.



We're off the porch,

into the storm.


poem © 2017 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

from morguefile.com

I need a t-shirt which reads: it takes a village to post a poem...but this one is pretty cool, too:

My fabulous new t-shirt! The UCLA Extension Writers' Program
gave each instructor at our annual retreat
(my next class runs Oct 3-Dec 12)

Thank you, Tabatha, for hosting today's PF at The Opposite of Indifference ~

Yes, Virginia, it really does take a village...and a dog. And a stuffed monkey. Posted with love by April Halprin Wayland with help from Carmela Martino, Eli and Monkey ~

Be Honest: Do You Like This Post? Gut Level Truth In Poetry...and in Life

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Howdy, Campers!

Note the four exciting announcements at the bottom of this post (including this: today's the last day to enter our current book giveaway.)

Thank you, Elizabeth Steinglass, for hosting Poetry Friday today!

I had a wonderful poetry teacher, Tony Lee, who taught us about voice.

Describing something, as a journalist does, Tony said, is the reporting voice.  That voice comes from the lips, the mouth, the throat.

from morguefile.com

Writing about feelings comes from the gut, a lower, truer, sometimes scarier place, he said.  

from morguefile.com

This is the deep voice.  The deep voice attracts readers.  It connects them to your story.  Be brave, he told us. Find the feelings. Go there.

So why do some blog and FaceBook posts get nine kazillion comments (not mine!) and some get zip?

from FaceBook

12,341,889 likes ~ 58,962 talking about this

Putting aside JoAnn's terrific post about social media and the perfect lengths for poems, posts, headings, etc. in various online media...

it seems to me that getting your work read (or, more to the point, getting your work read and passed on) is about superficial vs. deep.

Just like a book in which the author rips off her shirt and shows us her scars (as Anne Lamott does), FaceBook and blog posts that come from the gut are the ones that resonate.

I was at a meeting the other day; each of us had three minutes to talk about anything we wanted.  The first two minutes and 30 seconds I talked about some success I had had.  In the last 30 seconds, my mouth opened and an embarrassing truth popped out.  I said that Robyn Hood Black had very kindly gifted me homemade granola.  It was especially touching because Robyn knows I can't eat sugar, so she made it with sugar-free maple syrup.  I could actually have it.  Delighted, I sat down for lunch, thinking I'd taste just a spoonful, just to see what it was like.

Good granola is dense, so you don't need much.  And you and I know that you're supposed to eat two cups of granola over a period of several days--with fresh blueberries and your pinky finger raised, right?

Not me... immediately my mouth opened, a vacuum turned on, my brain turned off, and nearly two cups of absolutely delicious granola were gone.  Gone!

This isn't Robyn's granola.
Hers had yummy bits of coconut in it.
But...um...I didn't have time to take a picture of hers.
So this is from morguefile.com

As we went around the room sharing, do you think others in the group commented on the nicely packaged pithy wisdom in my first two minutes and thirty seconds?  Nope.  Nearly ALL of them talked about my granola adventure.  It hit a familiar nerve. We've all been there.

It was no longer mine...it was all of ours.  

During Poetry Month this year, I had what I called a metaphoraffair--I practiced finding metaphors, posting one each day, both on my website (where, it turned out, the comment mechanism was broken) and on FaceBook and Twitter.

The metaphor which drew the most interest was my final post for Poetry Month 2014, written with and about my mother, who is 91 and not doing great.  It was hard for me to post; it was true. It was from my gut.

I drew this in November, 2010, after Mom and I walked around a park in Malibu…suddenly I was the parent

The point is, be brave, cut deep beneath the skin, share from the gut, share your humaness. That's all we have.
                                                                             *   *   *   *
LAST CALL! If you haven't entered our current giveaway, it ends today!  To enter, go to Jill Esbaum's post to win your very own autographed copy of Jill's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest (National Geographic Books)!

Will you be in New York on May 18th? I'll be speaking on the Children's Books Panel of the Seminar on Jewish Story in New York City on Sunday, May 18th.  Here's my interview the seminar organizer, Barbara Krasner published on her blog.

For an example of a beautifully written post which hits a nerve, read Jama Rattigan's gorgeous and heartfelt Mother's Day post.

And, last but not least, happy Children's Book Week!  Be brave. Go forth and share the very thing that hard to share.

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland...but you knew that, right?

Happy 5th Blogiversary to us! Book Bundles Giveaway! Poetry Month! And Poetry Friday!

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Howdy Campers ~  Happy Poetry Month!  Happy Poetry Friday!  And...

Happy 5th Blogiversary to us!

Details of our Book Bundles Giveaway below

On April 22, 2009, powered by the dazzlingly bright solar power of Carmela Martino, we started this blog.

Five years--what a fabulous ride it's been!

Five candles.  And when there are candles, someone makes a wish and blows them out. So you could say that this image represents the six active TeachingAuthors. (We're celebrating all TeachingAuthors who have been part of our blog biography.)

Campers, thank you from the bottom of our candles for reading, following, commenting and encouraging us. You're why we do this. You're why I'm terrified everytime a post is due. We want to add something meaningful and merry to the party! In celebration of You, this month's drawing is for one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book. Yay You! (Details below.)

* * * 

This month, inspired by the Chicago Favorite Poem Project, each of us will share a favorite poem. One of mine is "Liberty" by Janet Wong, from her book, The Declaration of Interdependence--Poems for an Election Year and also included in Caroline Kennedy's Poems to Learn by Heart) read (and reproduced below) with Janet's kind permission:



LIBERTY
by Janet Wong from DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE – Poems for an Election Year

I pledge acceptance
of the views
so different,
that make us America

To listen, to look,
to think, and to learn

One people
sharing the earth
responsible
for liberty
and justice
for all.

Wow, right?  So much substance packed into 12 lines.

* * * 

This month is overflowing with poetry!  Three TeachingAuthors are celebrating in three ways:

• Laura is writing riddle-me haiku;
• I'm in love with metaphors, so I'm having a metaphoraffair this month;
• JoAnn will be posting poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts here, while on her own blog she's adding more poetry writing tips and assorted poetry treats, including giveaways of Write a Poem Step by Step.

Also, Sylvia Vardell's Texas Women University students chose poems from the The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science: Poems for the School Year Integrating Science, Reading, and Language Arts and have made "poem movies" of them.  They'll appear on Sylvia's blog all this month. My poem "Old Water" will be featured on April 6.

And thank you, Amy, of The Poem Farm, for hosting Poetry Friday today!

* * *

By now you're asking: "How can I enter to win a Book Bundle?

Our giveaway starts at midnight on Friday, 4/3 and ends at midnight of the day after our blogiversary, 4/23.

--You have a chance to win one of FIVE "blogiversary book bundles." Each bundle is a set of five books hand-selected by a TeachingAuthor and contains at least one autographed TA book.

--Books will be mailed directly to the winner, so winners must have a US mailing address.

--You have 3 entry options, and can enter via 1, 2, or all 3 options to increase their chances. (We DO verify that you've met all the criteria for each option. Incomplete entries will be disqualified.)

1) Tell us how you follow the blog (by "follow" we mean some sort of automated subscription service, such as via email, Facebook, Bloglovin', etc.) We have links in the sidebar to make it easy to start subscribing if you haven't already.

2) Leave a comment on THIS blog post. If you have difficulty commenting, you can submit comments via email to teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com. For this giveaway, you need to include in the comment either a) the title of a favorite poem OR b) the title of a favorite TeachingAuthor blog post.

Please be also sure to include your name in the comment so we can verify you've fulfilled this option. [Some folks don't comment with their real name and we have no way of knowing who they are!]

3) Help spread the word. Share a link back to this blog post from your own blog, or from Twitter, Pinterest, or any other way we can verify online. You must include the URL of the link in the space provided.

And good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland.  Monkey's on vacation.

Metaphorically-Speaking: Crystal Chan's Wednesday Writing Workout

Crystal Chan’s writing in her debut middle grade novel Bird (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster) shines, pure and simple, much like the story’s star, twelve-year-old Jewel.

Posted comments from several readers of Monday’s (Soaring!)Student Success Story  who read the novel’s beginning pages on Crystal’s website chorus this truth.

Lucky us that Crystal agreed to share a Wednesday Writing Workout with our readers.

And, don’t forget to enter our Book Giveaway to win an autographed copy of Bird.  The deadline is February 14.

Thanks, Crystal, for sharing this Wednesday Writing Wokout – as well as – your story and Bird with our TeachingAuthors readers.

Happy soaring (metaphorically-speaking)!

Esther Hershenhorn

                                                            . . . . . . . .

Good writing uses metaphors – metaphors add sparkle to your prose and can quickly convey ideas that otherwise would get muddled up.

Take this passage, which is from my novel, Bird:

We slowed down when we reached the thin, outlying trees, which seemed to sweat in the summer heat. The trees further in got bigger, thicker, and under their protective canopy they became a grove of mothers holding out their arms, shielding us from the sun.

See? [The trees] became a grove of mothers – with that short metaphor, an image is conjured up, feelings evoked, the tone set.

Here’s an exercise for you to write a poem using metaphors. I found it in Steve Kowit’s In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop.

Why poems? Because good writing is also poetic. And the more you can tune your ear to the cadence and rhythm of words, the more you can stretch your mind to make leaps and use metaphors as the bridge between them, the stronger and more compelling your writing will be.

1.       Take an object you have nearby – perhaps a ring, a piece of pottery or paper clip – and place it in front of you. Spend a few minutes looking at it quietly.

2.      Notice things about the object that you never noticed before. Allow yourself to feel it, smell it, observe it from various angles.

3.      Write four metaphors turning it into four different things: “The paperclip is a silver whirlpool…”

4.      Finally, write a poem about the object using some of those metaphors. Let the poem go where it wants to, its direction determined more by the inventive play of language than by your conscious efforts.

Happy writing!

Crystal Chan
www.crystalchanwrites.com
www.facebook.com/crystalchanwrites

We Have A Winner! And We Have A Writer's Drought Poem for Poetry Friday!

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Howdy, Campers!

Happy hot and glorious summer!  I'm loving this hotter-than-usual Southern California summer: lying on hot cement by the pool in a wet bathing suit, barefeet, no sleeves, long days, bright mornings, driving with all the windows down, sleeping with all the windows open, taking Eli to the dog park early because he's black and brown and otherwise he gets too hot to romp like a pony, cold drinks with just the right kind of crunchy ice...I can go on listing all the things I love about summer.

Speaking of lists, we have a winner of Sylvia Vardell's book, THE POETRY BOOK OF LISTS!  If you were on vacation, Sylvia was our Mystery Guest Author on August 3rd.  It was very exciting.  And so is announcing the winner, who is...dum-dah-dah-dum...Carl Scott!   Yay, Carl!

And now onto the topic we TeachingAuthors have been discussing:

GETTING THROUGH TIMES OF DROUGHT
OR HOW I FILL THE WRITING WELL. 

(Sorry...I didn't mean to shout.)

Mary Ann posted about finding at least three things to write in her journal each day that trigger her curiosity.  Carmela posted that she replenishes her writer's well by taking herself on an artist playdate. And Carmela tells us about her friend, Leanne Pankuch, who writes a page a day.  

My contribution is the following poem, inspired by our topic.

DROUGHT
by April Halprin Wayland

We writers,
we've been through Hard Times.
Dry times.
The Long Drought.

Dry?  Oh my.
We place our plates upside down,
glasses bottom side up,
so the winds won't blast dust into 'em.

Our typewriters go thirsty on parched parchment.
We've got scrawny stories—or none at all.
Ideas simply
evaporate.

We hear that on the outskirts of Amarillo,
crows built a nest from barbed wire—
the only thing they could scavenge
from burned-out fields.

Those birds made a nest
from barbed wire?
Well, Sir, then so can we.
And then: we'll crow.

poem © 2012 April Halprin Wayland.  All rights reserved.

WRITING WORKOUT: Vitamins

Raise your hand if you take vitamins.  Now look at the vitamin bottle.  Do the directions say: take one when the mood strikes you?

I challenge you to write something, anything, every day, even if it's small, even if it's crummy. The trick to doing this consistently, for me, turned out to be connecting with a writing buddy.  You may remember that I write a poem a day and send each one to my friend who sails around the world in a trimaran.  Well, Bruce is now writing a poem a day, too, and sending them to me.  It's a lovely circular thing. 

One brilliant poem a day?  Ha ha.  Some rare days the poems are wonderful.  I give those a star.  Some days they're just okay.  Poetic possibilities in waiting.  And some days, wandering in a desert, or depleted by Real Life, I can only squeeze out what Bruce and I call a PHP--a Place Holder Poem.

So every day, take your vitamins.  Write a page or a poem.  And walk out your door into the world feeling virtuous.  You are a writer.

Thanks to Andromeda at A Wrung Sponge for hosting Poetry Friday!
(Note from Carmela: Andromeda's roundup didn't come out until Saturday.
Meanwhile, Mary Lee was kind enough to post one at A Year of Reading) 

posted by April Halprin Wayland

Metaphors, Similes, Panic in Picture Books, and Bathing a Dog--all! Happy Poetry Friday!

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Happy Poetry Friday and howdy to all February Picture Book Marathoners!  You can do it, you can do it--you can, you can!

Similes.  Metaphors.  You know them well.

Similes compare two unlike objects using "like" or "as": That dog is like a lump of clay--he never chases balls.

Metaphors, in contrast, don't: That dog, a lump of clay, never chases balls. Or simply, That lump of clay never chases balls.

Eli being a lump of clay.

"Metaphor" sounds like someone saying, "May the Force," doesn't it?  (It does if you tilt your head sideways and sing LALALA really loudly...)  Their force, their power can create vivid images in our minds.

When I was writing It's Not My Turn To Look For Grandma!, my editor asked me to clarify that the story starts at sunrise and ends at sundown.  I had no idea how to communicate this without being too wordy or clunkily obvious.  I was actually pretty frightened.

I flailed about.  My flailing is not pretty.  Want to see what it looks like close up?  This Monday I had a boatload of writing to do in the afternoon.  But first I had to have lunch--I mean, c'mon.  Since I was a little lost and didn't quite know how to start any of the projects looming over me, another helping of veggies and rice seemed like a jolly good idea and oh, that left-over clam chowder sure looked yummy.

After my large lunch, the flailing continued.  I had a poem due and no ideas.  None. Nada.  I lead a pretty pathetic little life, I decided.  Except for the dog park and the gym, I'd had no human contact.  So I looked around my room.  Eli was a lump of clay on the love seat--no help there.

I was too lazy to actually stand up and walk to my bookshelf (sometimes I'm inspired by the pattern or subject of other poems).  There was a lemon next to my computer because I'd picked it from our tree and meant to drop it off in the kitchen but brought it into my office instead.

Not to make those of you shivering under snow jealous or anything, but this is our Meyer lemon tree right this very minute.

A lemon.  Hmmm.  So I wrote a poem about the lemon.  That lemon saved my day.

But back to my book and how to show time passing.  I flailed (picture a woman with eight arms, frantically waving them in all directions--yeah, that's me...).  I think I did some brainstorming.  Or maybe I opened the refrigerator and took out an egg.  I don't remember.  The key is that in the middle of this kind of panic, I know one thing: I've got to keep my eyes and ears open to any gifts the universe may be giving me.

I made a hard boiled egg.

My mind began to play.  What if the sun were an egg?  This turned into my scaffolding upon which I could hang time passing. Here's what I sprinkled throughout the story:

• Dawn was just cracking over the hills.
• Noon was sizzling like an egg in a cast-iron pan.
• Afternoon clouds scrambled in the sky.
• Shadows were eating up the day.

No one notices this as they are reading the book.  But it helped me stop flailing and begin writing.  

Are you flailing?  Maybe the Writing Workout below will help.

Writing Workout ~ Metaphors and Similes


In the poem below, I used the metaphor of war.  There are battle images in each stanza.  Which are similes?  Which are metaphors?

BATH
by April Halprin Wayland
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My sister and I are pushing a big aluminum tub
across our brick patio to the grass
sounding like a tank rolling towards war.

I hold the hose and she turns the spigot.
Water thunders into the tub like a drum roll
filling it up.
x
Searching,
we find him trembling behind bushes,
camouflaged.
x
We pull our prisoner across the yard,
his head down,
his paws gripping the passing grass;
x
then, my sister, because she is older,
lifts him above the tub...
and with a long sigh, he surrenders.
This poem was included in the book, Poems for Brothers, Poems for Sisters selected by Myra Cohn Livingston (Holiday House, 1988)

So here's your assignment: go into your bathroom and look for gifts from the universe.  Could that bar of soap be a hunk of cheese or the remote control of a Martian space ship?  Is the bathtub a giant stew pot...and are you part of the stew? What could a toothbrush be?  The toilet?  Shaving cream?  A liquid soap dispenser?  If the bathroom doesn't trigger ideas, take your Metaphor and Simile Search to the rest of the house.  Is the stove a creature with four eyes?

Once you have a few fresh ideas, pick one and write a poem or start a picture book.  Dive in--and metaphors be with you!

poem, drawings and photos of our lemon tree and of Eli on the love seat (c) April Halprin Wayland