51 Poets on Being Imperfect ~ Middle School Poems

Howdy Campers ~ and happy Poetry Month 2022, Poetry Friday and April Fools Day! (my poem and the link to Poetry Friday are below) 

Carmela and I are excited to announce that our poems have been included in the poetry anthology, IMPERFECT II: Poems About Perspective: an anthology for middle schoolers, edited by the wonderful Tabatha Yeatts (History House Publishers, April 2022)

IMPERFECT II features poems by:
Robert Schechter * William Peery * Laura Mucha * Lisa Varchol Perron * Buffy Silverman * Heidi Mordhorst * Mary Lee Hahn * Mia Perron * Myrna Foster * Laura Purdie Salas * Tricia Torrible * April Halprin Wayland * Christy Mihaly * Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer * Diana Murray * Rebecca Gardyn Levington * Rochelle Burgess * Liz Garton Scanlon * Linda Kulp Trout * Alan J. Wright * François Villon * Michelle Heidenrich Barnes * Linda Mitchell * Alana DeVito * Elisabeth Norton * Carmela Martino * Molly Hogan * Michelle Schaub * Laura Shovan * Catherine Flynn * Carl Sandburg * Abby Wooldridge * Sydney Dunlap * Marzieh Abbas * Donna JT Smith * Paul Laurence Dunbar * Suzy Levinson * Helen Kemp Zax * Kathleen McKinley Harris * Margaret Simon * Ella Wheeler Wilcox * Ruth Bowen Hersey * Diane Mayr * Mizuta Masahide * Michelle Kogan * Charles Ghigna * Jone Rush MacCulloch * Richard Schiffman * Tabatha Yeatts * Robyn Fohouo * Isaac Leib Perez

Look for Carmela's poem in this book, Backyard Dandelions, in her May 20, 2022 post.

Here's one of my poems in this collection: 

FINGERPRINT  by April Halprin Wayland 

There’s a tiger in my fingerprint.

And fret and tire and ping.

And maybe also ripening:

ignite and fire and ring.

 

On grey days there’s no tiger,

just pine, inept, infringe.

I cannot roar with pen or print

there’s only grief and only rip

 

But maybe also...

tiger grit.

poem (c) 2022 by April Halprin Wayland, from IMPERFECT II: Poems About Perspective ~ an anthology for middle schoolers, edited by Tabatha Yeatts (History House Publishers 2022)
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This is an In One Word poem, a form I invented. (Does one really "invent" poetic forms?)

The word I repeat a lot to myself lately is “fingerprint”...which to me means that no one can say what I need to do to get through the hard times, to right a wrong; no one can tell me how to create or live my life. The hard work is this: I need to discover my own fingerprint. 

This applies to how many potato chips are okay and how many are too many, as well as who do I want to hang out with? Where do I want to put my energies? And what time do I need to go to bed tonight? (I'll probably to ignore my own advice on that one...)

I wish someone I trusted, someone I looked up to had taken me aside in the crowded hallway of Lincoln Middle School, looked me in the eyes, and helped me understand that there is no perfect way to live your life. 

The question for each of us is: what's your fingerprint?

And one more thing: Sylvia Vardell's blog highlights Pomelo Books' newest anthology--this time for younger kiddos--THINGS WE EAT, which features full-color photos of foods in alphabetical order accompanied by a poem. JUST published, it's already a ⭐️A Children's Book Council Hot Off the Press Selection⭐️!

Here's mine in this beautifully presented collection:

Thank you, Heidi, at my juicy little universe for hosting PF this week!

posted with lots of love and a little bit of brain fog by April Halprin Wayland

2 Causes of Writers' Block & Poetry Friday

..Howdy, Campers ~ and happy Poetry Friday! (original poem and PF link below)

We TeachingAuthors are in the middle of a round about Writers' Block.

Mary Ann writes about The Scariest Thing on Earth--Your W.I.P; Bobbi helped me understand the facts about writers' block in her post with the great title, Once Upon a Block-ness Monster; JoAnn feels better able to handle writers' block in her new writing chair; Carla says for her, writers' block comes in the form of too many ideas.

In this 2:45 minute video interview, author Neil Gaiman makes a distinction between writers' block and simply being stuck. And my fav children's literature ezine, Quercus, alerted me to Marion Dane Bauer's views on this topic.

For me, the two causes of writers' block are fear and perfectionism (who are most certainly twin brothers).

Fear and Perfection--twin brothers ~ from Morguefile.com by Maria Bavuso

So what do I DO when I'm blocked? Well...I could read the 22 rules of storytelling from Pixar. Chances are, one of those might unclog my blocked pipes.

Note that I said that these might help. I haven't actually tried of them yet. But you should. You definitely should.

During one of those fear-filled times in my life, I told a friend I'd stopped writing completely. How, I asked her, do you begin again? She looked around. Then she shared her journal writing secret: write for just one minute each night. So I tried it. I mean, who couldn't write for one minute, for heaven's sake?  It sounds so simple, but her secret did the trick. (I wrote about it here.)

Thank you, long-ago friend!  This is the assignment in my UCLA Extension's Writers' Program courses:

Write a one-minute journal each day. Take just one (timed) minute to record the thing you most want to remember about today. It can be weighty—that your friend passed the bar exam, for example. But it could be that one moment—seeing the long slant of the sun on a skateboarder as she skated past.

from morguefile.com by Domas

As an example, here's something I wrote in a rush:

I'm always frantic in the evening; I like to write my daily poem before Gary comes home. But tonight he came home and I had nothing.

I asked him if he had any ideas for a poem, for something that sticks...and as I said it, I saw an image of the things that stick to my clothes on a hike.

Sometimes the Universe is good to me. Well, most times, actually.

A POEM STICKS TO YOUR CLOTHES
by April Halprin Wayland

It's like something that clings to your shirt—
one of those blue sticky flowers,
or a foxtail.

At the end of the day,
you take off your jacket
and there it is,

soft like a real fox's tail,
tenacious,
pointed,

and sometimes
painful.

It must be dealt with.
poem © 2016 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

sticky blue plumbago flower
photo by April Halprin Wayland

Okay, Campers--now it's your turn. Attack a fresh page--with words and/or doodles--for one minute. You’ll be glad you did.

And thanks, Violet, for hosting PF today!

fettered by perfectionism and posted with fear by April Halprin Wayland, with considerable help from a decaf latte with extra soy