Poetry Friday – Librarians Get NASTY

Cece and I just had a great joint presentation at a VEMA conference, which is the Virginia Educational Media Association, which I think  was a convention of librarians.

From somewhere came the title “Making Books Fun” or something like that. So Cece and I showed the librarians what we do when we visit schools.

Cece had those librarians wearing animal ears and acting out “Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood.” The key is casting Sock Monkey well, she always says, and she got a wild one this time!

As for me, I gave the librarians the same challenge I give kids. Can you do what the kids do in my book, The Qwikpick Adventure Society and write poems that create not a word picture, but a word smell? And can you make it even stinkier?

Yes, they could… and some of the could even get the haiku syllables right in just 2 or 3 minutes of writing time. This one came close:

thrown up stinky

chunky bits of Cheerios

mixed with applesauce

-Anonymous

And they could be funny:

Candles burning bright

Caught my hair on fire tonight

Crackling hair, stinking so

-Diana

But one librarian wrote a simply incredible poem. Oddly it was the first I read and was a total surprise. It did not win the popular vote, which went to a poem which was (I think) an inside VEMA joke, but this poem is among the very best ever written for Qwikpick Instant Poetry Contests…

Unpacking winter box

Afghan reveals bones, tissue

Heart races, smell explodes

-Deborah Wood

Poetry Friday – More Kid “haiku”

Like I said, I had a great reading.signing at the Blue Ridge Library yesterday.

There were an amazing 33 (or so ) entries in my Instant Poetry Contest.

As usual the theme was “The Worst Thing You ever Smelled.” We didn’t worry much about the syllable count for the haikus, but I did try to get them to write just three lines.

PRETTY GROSS, so don’t continue if you don’t want to read good old fashioned kid-style disgust:

Hello Kitty a secret Qwikpicker?

Hello Kitty loves some of the same stuff as the characters in Qwikpick:

Namely haiku, origami and beef jerky!

Origami paper        /\/\Beef jerky

<<<Haiku book

Poetry Friday – Kid wins Qwikpick Poetry Contest!

Yeeha, here’s a winner of my first ever Instant Poetry Contests, featuring Roanoke County middle school students!

They were given a few minutes to write a poem about “The Worst Thing I Ever Smelled.” Winners got Qwikpick t-shirts.

This one won by popular vote amongst the older group of students. It was supposed to be a haiku, but you’ll notice she’s a tiny bit off on her syllable count. (I’ve edited her spelling, but kept her line breaks.)

Warning! It’s gross!!!!

“The Nasty Smell”

by Seairra

The worst thing that I’ve smelled

was my dog giving birth it smelled like

rotten eggs, throw up, poop that been

in the toilet for 2 weeks. That was the

most nastiest thing I’ve smelled in

my life. After that I ran to the

restroom and threw up.

Also! Kidlit author and blogger Linda B./Acorn has contributed a wonderful haiku to my haiku showcase. It’s an ode to the Qwikpick-related Flash game on my Website. It wins a prize for all-time best use of Molly Hatchett reference in a haiku.

By the way, Linda’s got some cool stuff going on her blog. Check it out!

Poetry Friday

For my second foray into Poetry Friday Land, I decided to ask a real poet — Mary Hill of Elliston, Virginia — to write a haiku for my book’s website’s haiku showcase. The result has really blown me away. This is levels and levels beyond the kinds of haiku I write.  I hope you like it, too. I have another of Mary’s haiku’s plus others by both real and fictional people at the Qwikpick Showcase.

If I loved you more

I might need extra fingers.

Would you lend me yours?

—— Mary Hill

Time for Timer

Normally Kid Lit wouldn’t extend to TV, but I’ve been watching the old Time For Timer vids on Youtube and here’s a little something amazing:

“I’ve got something planned which is

Little cheese sandwiches.”

I figured this would be more appealing than hearing me grumble today…

Poetry Friday

I decided to jumo on this Poetry Friday bandwagon. Every kidlit blogger seems to honor Poetry Friday. Meanwhile, I run around claiming my book promotes kid poetry. So, here’s a poem sent in to my Haiku Showcase over at http://www.qwikpickpapers.com.

It’s a haiku by actual kids and it rocks!

Our moms drink coffee
They might sometimes go crazy
They don’t eat cow pies
—–Jarrett, Blacksburg, and Maxwell, Crickenburg