Oh Dirty River by Helen Lehndorf

The town where I grew up


was small, ugly and smelledlike burning blood.



Most of the dads and


a lot of the mums andheaps of the big brothers and sisters

worked at the Freezing Works.



Thousands of cows and sheep


and even a few hundred pigs

would get trucked in, slaughtered,chopped up and packaged
in cling film each day.



The burning-blood smell

came from the incineratorwhere

Children's Poets Laureates

Most of us think of THE Poet Laureate as the one that represents our country. For the U.S., that is Natasha Trethewey who was recently appointed to serve a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
But many U.S. states and cities have also been designating laureates on a local level.

I'm pleased that there have also been more appointments for children�s poets laureate. Here are three recent appointments.

Children�s Poet Laureate for Wales named at National Urdd Eisteddfod" from Wales Online

�Former Urdd Eisteddfod chair Aneirin Karadog has been named as Wales� next Children�s Poet Laureate. Mr. Karadog said, �The role involves working with young people during their formative years, when the imagination is so alive.... One of the appealing factors is a chance to re-light my own imagination through theirs.��

"UK�s first black children�s laureate: new history curriculum could alienate pupils� from The Guardian (UK)
�Ted Hughes, then poet laureate, and his friend and fellow author Michael Morpurgo devised the laureateship�first awarded in 1999 to illustrator Quentin Blake�to mark a lifetime�s contribution to children�s literature and highlight the importance of children�s books. Previous children�s laureates include Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Michael Rosen, Anthony Browne and Morpurgo.... Blackman is the eighth children�s laureate, inheriting the role from the Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson.�


From The Los Angeles Times "Poetry Foundation names Kenn Nesbitt its children�s poet laureate

�The Poetry Foundation announced Tuesday that Revenge of the Lunch Ladies author Kenn Nesbitt will be its next children�s poet laureate, a position the foundation created in 2006 to recognize that �children have a natural receptivity to poetry and are its most appreciative audience.�... This honor is not related to the U.S. poet laureate, who is named by the Library of Congress. Nor is it connected to regional poets laureate, such as Eloise Klein Healy in Los Angeles or Juan Felipe Herrera, California�s poet laureate. Nesbitt succeeds J. Patrick Lewis as the fourth poet to hold the position. His numerous books for children�all of them full of child-appropriate silliness�include The Tighty-Whitey Spider, My Hippo Has the Hiccups, and My Foot Fell Asleep. In an interview with outgoing laureate Lewis, Nesbitt listed influences including Lewis Carroll, MAD magazine, and �that greatest of all children�s poets, Anonymous.��

Palmy by Jennifer Compton

Some injudicious thoughts about this city. Nothing else
can be written.



I perch in my flat on top of the Square at that dullest
hour before dawn,

wreathed in Happy by Clinique For Men from Farmers in the
Plaza.

I lurk in the mirrored department of luxury and when the
girls go off

to mend their hair and drink tea I spray at random. I love
perfume

but don't want to smell the same night

Some Last Things by Sam Rasnake

So many words to say now he'll never say though

he feels their weight in silence, though he needs

their meanings, he knows he won't find them,



still they bite at his tongue � what he once questioned

he knows for fact, what he once believed, he's long since

forgotten or dreamed away � if you whisper your truths,



they'll disappear, he'd say, so he never whispers them �

and when he

Untitled (If You Have Linen Women) by Robin Hyde

If you have linen
women, raspberry women


Red and thick of the mouth, with dock-leaf women
(Little light foxy spores � mind them, such women,)
If you have green grape women, flour-bin women,
Amber-in-forest, wild-mint-scented women,
Trey-bit in church or drudging kit-bag women,
Little sad bedraggled wind-has-weazened-one women,
White bean women, perhaps anemone women.
And harp-like facing the

Prompt: Torn from the Headlines

Newspaper headlines writers often have a flair for puns and other wordplay. Jay Leno made a regular crowd-sourced segment on The Tonight Show from reading headlines and ads that were sent in by viewers.

Sometimes it's intentional, as in a story about creating unique holiday sweatsuits called "Fleece Navidad." Sometimes the writers are having fun with innuendo as in "Summit ski area gets first decent dump." Sometimes you wonder what they were thinking, or if they were thinking: "Home sales up, despite fewer homes sold" and "Abe Lincoln played key role in 'Lincoln.'"

But headlines as poem titles can serve the same purposes as most titles for poems; they offer a way into a poem and they can offer more than one way to view the poem.

Headline poems are frequently quite serious. They use an actual headline as the title. The poem may address directly the topic of the headline, or it may offer another perspective where the headline seems more ironic.

This month, for the first time, I am using one of my own poems as a model for a prompt. This is a poem that did come from an actual newspaper headline, but the story I chose to tell did not appear in the article. I was more taken in my thoughts with trying to put myself into the event that no one witnessed that occurred in a wooded area I knew as a place that deer often emerged from onto the road in front of my car.


Woman Found In Wooded Area

She ran through the woods
to escape him.
He followed the path
knowing he would reach
the same place.

She wore stockings.
The thorns tore at them
and she bled.

When she came out,
her breath was visible
and he could smell her.

Like a deer, she stilled,
hoping he could not see her.
But he could.


Another example of a headline poem is one in the current issue of Crazyhorse by Amaud Jamaul Johnson titled �L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates Dead at 83."

One of your two prompt options for June is to write a headline poem. Use the headline as your title. Grab a newspaper or click over to a newspaper site and start reading.

This month, since we have two possible prompts for your June writing, you may choose either or both and submit one or two poems. As a new submission requirement, we ask that you include in your email submission subject line both the word "submission" (which sorts it automatically to the proper mail folder) AND also the short title of the prompt - this month it will be "traveling" or "headlines." We always get poems submitted that don't have the correct subject line and also don't have anything to do with the current prompt, so perhaps this will help with the sorting process. 

Submissions due by June 30, 2013.

Prompt: Traveling

I know of several new books out this spring and summer that offer prompts and inspiration for poets. One of those is Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories by my friend and mentor, Maria Mazziotti Gillan.

Maria's book is all about how she writes and on some of her beliefs about poetry. First off, she says we all have stories to tell. Our stories. And those stories are best told and most universal when they are rich with the details and truth of the actual experiences.

Whether she is working with her graduate students as director of the creative writing program at Binghamton University-SUNY, or running a weekend retreat with old and new poets, she has her ways of helping writers get into that dark and frightening cave that holds our stories, and ways to get past that crow that sits above us and frightens us from saying what we know is the truth.

The book offers a series of short, readable chapters on ways to find those stories, make your writing stronger and get past the many fears that poets (including herself) encounter.

The chapters include model poems, generally her own writing with background on the situation, and exercises.

The final section is more than a hundred pages of short prompts in groups of five. They are often a phrase and rarely more than a sentence. In workshops, Maria will often call out a half dozen suggestions to a group and just ask you to choose one that resonates, or combine several.

I have chosen a group of Maria's prompts that share the theme of traveling.

Write about:
a train, bus or plane that you missed
riding on a school bus
leaving Penn Station, Canal Street or any specific location
a cab ride
running away from home
Start with "I have driven highways..." or
"on the street where we lived..."

For a sample traveling poem to consider, look on the main site's prompt page for "The Bus Through Jonesboro, Arkansas" by Matthew Henriksen.

This month, since we have two possible prompts for your June writing, you may choose either or both and submit one or two poems. As a new submission requirement, we ask that you include in your email submission subject line both the word "submission" (which sorts it automatically to the proper mail folder) AND also the short title of the prompt - this month it will be "traveling" or "headlines." We always get poems submitted that don't have the correct subject line and also don't have anything to do with the current prompt, so perhaps this will help with the sorting process. 

Submissions due by June 30, 2013.