Celebrating Children's Poetry - Dreaming with Stacie

Happy National Poetry Month, Toads! I'm happy to share poetry - both written and spoken aloud - and excited to see what inspiring verses April brings us. Thank you for allowing me to continue to be a part of this rich community of poets, thinkers & dreamers.

Today I'd like to shine a light on children's poetry, because along with music, it is what first sparked a fire in me to read, write, and eventually pursue a lifelong career in the arts. How did it do this? By encouraging me to play, to wonder, to discover, to dream and to express myself. I was a small child, an only child - and when I began school, arguably a quiet and sometimes lonely child. Poems helped me understand a world that was complex and, at times, seemingly un-navigable. They also helped me understand myself, and spurred me to begin writing my own poems.

I know I'm not the only child to feel this way about poetry. Far from it! Indeed, there are many examples of children who have used the power of language (& music, & art, & dance) to become more confident young people. But further than instilling confidence, poetry keeps at its heart an experience of humanity like no other. Through the rhythms & words children hear and speak aloud they experience life at a sensual level. I always thought of poetry as a rainbow of not just colours but feelings, places and people. Today, as I read poems I still also feel and experience them, hear and imagine their images in my mind, taste their words on my tongue & feel their rhythms in my chest.

As a writer, I'm often drawn back to thinking of how poetry makes me feel when I'm contemplating the blank page. We all get stuck sometimes, but it is the magic and wonder of poetry that has the power to spur our writing on. Listen to this beautiful spoken-word performance by young Asha @TedXKids -- "Pick up the Pencil."

Do you ever think of your favorite poems or poets from childhood? Did they inspire you to begin writing or do they inspire you to keep writing today? I am going to guess that the answer for many is yes! As a mother, I now love sharing classic poems with my children from Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Dr. Seuss, Edward Lear - as well as poems from contemporary poets. The poetry book that became my favorite in middle school, and certainly inspired me to write - is Hey World, Here I Am! by Jean Little.

In April of 2016, to celebrate National Poetry Month, I published a short collection of poems I wrote as a child - Canvas of Imagination: Poems. Because I love sharing poetry aloud, I recorded a playlist of some of them on Soundcloud. My hope is that they inspire other young people to read, write and share poetry. I've also recorded some of my favorite children's poems from Shel Silverstein & Roald Dahl, and will certainly be adding more in the future. If you'd like to listen, go to: https://soundcloud.com/stacie-eirich/sets

Children's poetry remains my favorite literary genre to read and perform. As much as I love the tactile experience of holding and reading a book, the chance to act it aloud is thrilling! There are some wonderful collections available that encourage you to listen to & perform children's poems aloud. One of my favorites is by children's poet laureate Julia Donaldson - aptly titled Poems to Perform.

Here is a fun poetry performance video from CBBC kids. It just makes me smile! :-) 

For today's poetry writing prompt, I'm challenging you to write - or speak - or act! - or sing! - a poem that harkens you back to your childhood imagination. It may be of any theme or form you choose, but it must be as creative as possible. (And no, it doesn't have to rhyme!) I hope it will be magical or whimsical, quirky or funny, colourful or even nonsensical! Create the kind a poem a child would love to read, hear or act out. And most important, have fun & love what you are creating. :-)

Thank you for reading, participating & visiting Imaginary Garden with Real Toads today. It's been my pleasure & privilege to add my voice to this community. Have a fabulous National Poetry Month! -Stacie

On Poetry, Writing & Metaphor - Dreaming with Stacie

Hello Toads! I hope 2017 is starting off well for you. I'm happy to be writing, reading and sharing poetry here with you this year. :-)

I read an article over at WriterUnboxed.com that has me thinking on the use of metaphor in writing. As a former writing teacher and lifelong poetry reader and writer, this is not something new to me - in fact, in graduate school one could argue that I spent entire semesters discussing it. I don't believe that language can ever really exist separate from images and sounds in our minds - there will always be points of intersection as we read and experience any text. However, what I found in my experiences as reader, writer, teacher - is that the metaphors people use will be specific -- inspiring sometimes to many, and sometimes only to ourselves. 

Why does poetry seem to be the medium that contains the most powerful, the most universal metaphors for human experience? To answer that once again, I had to look back at some of my favorite books on poetry and the insights I took from them.

Do you need to be a student or an "academic" to read these? Absolutely not. You just need a passion for language and experience -- for that which makes us human.

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How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry 
Edward Hirsch

Hirsch makes you conscious of where the readers exists in relation to the poem and how active and involved the reader becomes – how the reader acts on the poem and it in turn acts on them. “Poetry is a soul-making activity, and the reader in part authors that activity by responding to a form of the poem, its way of shaping itself.” (31). He takes an intensely personal route to understanding poetry, saying “read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night” at beginning and conclusion of his text.

Nine Gates: Entering The Mind of Poetry

Jane Hirshfield

Hirshfield explores how you can look at poetry through a series of “gates” or devices that open up the mind of poetry to the reader. She makes one contemplate what is means for poetry to have a mind of its own, much like Hirsch invited the thought of how a poem itself is acting upon a reader. Hirshfield sets out the six energies that exist within poetry – organizing things that I already knew existed in text and understanding them as alive and central to a form or shape – or larger concentration or mode. I was most influenced by her chapter on translation. “In the act of true translation, as opposed to the act of parsing out meaning, there is a moment when all prior knowledge of a poem dissolves, when the words that were are shed as a snake sheds its skin and the words that are take on their own life.” (61). She speaks here about the self and the other in a poem, and how a translator much lose sense of two separate beings and become one. This is not unlike the process students go through when reading and writing poems; they originally approach the text as an “other”, and hopefully teachers are giving them the tools to use to bring that text into something that is understandable and therefore, no longer an other. However, in the case of translation, as Hirshfield says, “the issue is to what extent a new version can mirror the original, to what extent it must find some differing paths toward the same destination.” (65).

More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor

George Lakoff and Mark Turner

“One major mode of poetic thought is to take a conventionalized metaphor and extend it” (67). The image this conjures up in my mind is one of a flexible bending muscle in the brain; by introducing conceptual metaphor in the classroom this is what students are asked to do. The are asked to take unconscious, but well known cultural, conventionalized metaphor that they hear and see and think of daily, and think about it in terms of poetry. By having students build a schema or organization system for a poem in order to understand it through first the images they see, and then the metaphorical associations these images or icons stand for and map to, they will be extending the language from the literal to the poetic, and their minds from the conventional to the abstract.

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Writing Prompt: 

Today I invite you to write a poem based on a specific metaphor. Rather than assigning you one, I'd like for your senses to guide you - take a few moments to sit quietly. Focus on an image, a sound, or a smell around you. Which one draws your attention most? Why? What are the words you think of when you see/hear/smell it? Draw a map of word or picture associations. Choose the metaphor that most inspires you to write your poem. 

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The art of metaphor - Jane Hirshfield (from Ted-Ed)

I hope you've enjoyed this journey in exploring & studying metaphor. Cracking open the books that inspired me as a student & teacher awaken my passion for writing all over again. Sharing that passion with others is worth everything. Thank you for reading, and I do hope you are inspired to participate. Happy Writing! -Stacie

Celebrating the Season - Dreaming with Stacie

Hello Toads! I hope that October has found you well and enjoying the season. It finally feels like Autumn where I live, & with October's end fast approaching I find much for poetic inspiration. The changing colors, the chill in the air, the pumpkins, the apples, the festivals & the music -- Autumn is so very alive with joy & excitement. It is a season of endings, yes, but also beginnings (at school, of holidays, of events).

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Here are a few of my Autumn photos - Can you feel the joy in them?

Beauty found on Autumn morning walk

Joy in leaf piles! 

Pumpkin Picking with my loves, Sadie & Dylan 

Monarch poses at fall festival 

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I know it is likely that not all of you celebrate Halloween, and indeed some of you are experiencing a completely different season right now. Therefore, I want to invite you to write a poem of any season -- whether it be the one you are in, or your favorite one that you may miss. The only parameter I put on it is that it must be a celebration of that season -- make us see, feel, hear & taste the joy in it. In other words, write with your senses as well as your heart. If that takes you to a spooky Halloween-town, or a serene Spring lake & fields of tulips -- so be it! Just take us there & have some fun with it!

For your viewing pleasure, and because Halloween is nearly upon us where I live -- here is "This is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I have a special affinity for this one, as I once performed in a musical version of it -- and it was the most delicious fun!

Voices, Spaces & Songbirds - Dreaming with Stacie

Hello Toads! I'm happy to be a part of this thriving community of poets and to write my first mid-week challenge post here. I often wake early to write, and so many journal entries reflect what is left in my consciousness from dreaming. The following journal entry stayed with me for days afterwards because voices, spaces and songbirds seem woven into the fabric of my skin -- and so, I will share it with you:

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I was dreaming about birds. Large, expansive wings billowing like clouds through the sky. White and clean, like Edelweiss flowers. Soft feathers rising in an arc across the sky, cutting close to the horizon. And there were sounds and names - the skylark, meadowlark, nightingale, linnet & finch. Whole songs about birds that have shaped part of my musical life, their songs and tinny voices weaved with my own. I stood and sang about a lone, wild bird in lofty flight, a bird who carried both loneliness and beauty, calling for a great spirit. In the song, I was both a part of the earth and something beyond it, something that could soar above it with great power and peace.

Western Meadowlark

Green Finch and Linnet

How many songbirds are there and what messages do they carry? Their energy comes from light, form earth, and from the vast sky - all which are on loan to us. A sort of impermanent beauty. Or perhaps it is us that are the fleeting ones? Yes, it feels as if they belong to this earth and we are just fortunate borrowers, thieves of their songs.

Before dreaming about birds I was lying awake, replaying songs in my mind and thinking about the space around me. How the space I stood in felt as if the air was permeated with an energy that flows from sound. How that energy feels, how it tastes - the way it lingers after a song ends. We are rooted in the earth but music is not - its notes, like the bird's voice, are elusive, ephemeral - ethereal - like fairy's wings shimmering across the sky. They glimmer for a second and are lost, not gone but simply moving forward to a new space.

This, I think, is a connection worth pursuing: between ourselves and the spaces that exist in time, the space in a room, around us, on the page. The quality of air in a space, in our breath, our bodies and on earth around us. Inevitably, space leads to ground, solid under our feet - to the sky above, to water below.





The Challenge: Write a poem about the connection I described above between ourselves and the spaces around and within us: Where and how does your human voice, the poet's voice (or even the bird's voice) fit within those spaces? You are welcome to respond with a poem of any length, in any form, and from the perspective of either human or bird.

Not surprisingly, both musicians and poets alike have been inspired by birdsong. One of my favorite bird songs to sing is Meadowlark -- here sung by the fabulous Liz Callaway. Not required listening but wonderful for inspiration!

 I recently read this wonderful, bird-inspired poetry collection. 

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.” 

― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

By the time this is posted, I will be away on a retreat -- as it is our last official week of summer here in Louisiana, before kids, teachers and school administrators go back to work. I look forward to reading your poems when I return, hopefully refreshed and ready to sing, teach and write once more.