Check It Out

Writing and Enjoying Haikuby Jane Reichhold is a book chock full of goodness for anyone wanting to delve into this poetry form.  The remaining two chapters (only four in the book) are “Enjoying Haiku with Other” and “Using Your Haiku Skills in Related Poetry Forms”.

Chapter three covers attending poetry readings, getting work into magazines, and other ways to publish your work. 

Probably one of the coolest things I read and will share with not only my poetry kids but drama kids is four things you want your audience able to do:
1. hear
2. think
3. react or feel
4. understand
The reading of poems or saying lines in a manner that the audience gets it is one of the biggest challenges at elementary school.

 One great idea about organizing your haiku is to consider organizing by season and then by the categories or attributes of the seasons such as celestial, terrestrial, and livelihood.  Other ways is to do so alphabetically or chronologically.

Reichhold has several suggestions about creating little haiku books to give as gives.  One of my favorites was to recycle envelopes incorporating the envelope writing and stamps in the design of the book.  She suggests that when putting together a book to organize the poetry seasonally beginning with spring.

I found her section on teaching haiku in the schools to be very helpful and am excited to work my young writers:

-encourage students to use their senses and create images from them
-get them to think outside and beyond themselves (a big challenge)
-suggest that the try using 6-8 words to begin.
-provide first ors second lines and have the students come up with the original third line to start.
-display the haiku.

Reichhold writes about getting published and talks about finding on-line publishing.

This is my news.  My poem “Nirvana” was published on-line at Four and Twenty: A Short Form Poetry Journal.  Click on the shirts, p. 22.   Another poem, “Tatted Stories” will be featured on Sept 1.Both poems began as haiku.
I highly recommend Writng and Enjoying Haiku.  In fact, I may buy a second copy to have at school so I don’t have to carry mine back and forth. So glad I took the time with the book this summer.

Am back to school and next week will share a school-related poem.  More poetry goodness can be found at The Boy Reader.  He is featuring a book I adore, The City I Love  by Lee Bennett Hopkins.

Happy Reading.

MsMac