Writing Tip / Celebrate Poetry Month with Leslie Bulion

Four Poetry Writing Tips from Leslie Bulion

1.       Read reams of poems. Learn which ones move your heart, tickle your funny bone, or sing in your ear. Do you like rhyme? Meter? Certain rhythms? Free verse? Shape poems? Your most successful poems will be those you’d love to read.

2.       If you’re working with a known form of poetry, learn the rules (see Tip #1). Be strict with yourself as you practice working within the rules. Once you fully understand how that particular poetry form works, you’ll know how to bend the rules (whee!) without compromising the integrity of the poem. For example, check out this great description of my favorite form, the double dactyl: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term.html?term=Double%20dactyl then try one yourself—they’re addictive, tricksy fun! How to be sure your six-syllable double dactylic word in line 6 has never been used in another double dactyl? (See Tip #3.)

3.       Make up words! If you’re writing funny poetry, have at it—play with your language. How often have you read a clever article or poem where the author’s invention of a word adds juice, humor and new meaning to the writing? I might have had my fill of ice storms,  but I thoroughly enjoyed all of the “snowcabulary” invented in honor of the winter of 2011. Of course, there is a caveat to making up words and it is this: every single reader has to be able to infer exactly what your word means on first read.

4.       Read your poem out loud at least a million times. How does it sound? Do you trip over your tongue? Do you have to hurry to fit a word into your established meter? Does your free verse pause and flow at the places you want it to? Do your rhymes rhyme? Now give your poem to a million friends and ask them to read it out loud. Did each friend put the emPHAasis on the  right syLLAbles? If the answer is yes, then BRAVO! Your poem is done!

 ABOUT AT THE SEA FLOOR CAFE Odd Ocean Critter Poems:

This clever collection of poems describes the devious and sometimes surprising methods ocean denizens use to forage for food, capture prey, trick predators, and protect their young. The poems swim effortlessly from page to page, leading us from the snail shell home of the jeweled anemone crab on the ocean floor to a violet snail hanging upside down in its bubble house on the sea’s surface. At the Sea Floor Cafe includes science notes with details about each animal's behavior, a glossary, and an appendix explaining the forms of poetry that appear on each spread. Striking linoleum prints round out this title, which can be used across the curriculum.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Leslie Bulion teams a life-long love of poetry and her oceanography background in At the Sea Floor Café (Peachtree 2011), her second collection of science poetry. The first, Hey There, Stink Bug! (Charlesbridge 2006), is an award-winning book of gruesomely humorous insect poems. Leslie’s other books include the Bank Street Best Books 2007 middle-grade novel Uncharted Waters (Peachtree 2006), The Trouble With Rules (Peachtree 2008), and the Children’s Africana Book Award Best Picture Book winner, Fatuma’s New Cloth (Moon Mountain 2002). A former school social worker, Leslie has written and edited books in the education market and has been a regular contributing writer in national magazines and on the Internet. She gives writing workshops and presentations to students, educators and writers throughout the US. Visit Leslie’s website at www.lesliebulion.com.

At the Sea Floor Café

ISBN: 978-1-56145-565-2

Total Pages: 48

Author: Leslie Bulion www.lesliebulion.com

Illustrator: Leslie Evans www.seadogpress.com

Peachtree Publishers www.peachtree-online.com

April 1, 2011

In honor of National Poetry Month, Peachtree Publishers is inviting educators to post students' poetry on their facebook page. At the end of the month, Peachtree will hold a drawing. One winner will receive a skype visit with me, and five others will win a copy of AT THE SEA FLOOR CAFE.

Here's a link to the contest rules:

http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1103596296500-87/Sea+Floor+Cafe+officialrules.pdf

WRITING ADVICE FROM DOWN UNDER: Bumbled Verse, Nothing's Worse!

I've reached across the globe to Australia to introduce you to my long-time cyber crit friend Jackie Hosking. She's always proved a great help with rhyme, rhythm and meter when members of our little group needed it. I'm pleased to  share her fun and helpful advice here today.

“Rhyme & Meter; nothing’s sweeter

Bumbled Verse; nothing’s worse.”

by Jackie Hosking

As a children’s writer and editor of rhyming stories and poetry I spend much of my time de-bumbling verse. If you think of your readers as passengers you’ll find that most feel comfortable when they can trust that their journey will be a smooth one. So the question is what are the factors that make for a bumpy ride?

Dori Chaconas, in an early post, told us about the importance of story, rhythm and rhyme (in that order) so I won’t go into that so much here. Instead I would like to expand on what it is we mean by the word ‘rhythm’.

Rhythm or meter, is the smoothinator. It takes the speed humps and the pot holes off the road. Novice rhymers, in my experience, tend to focus on the end rhymes and rush over the rhythm often forcing words into spaces where they do not fit. When reread, by the writer, we can liken it to a driver who is driving along a very familiar piece of road, they can pretty much do it with their eyes closed. When a new reader is put into the driver’s seat, they will not know to dodge the hidden pot holes and will inevitably fall into them. So how do we avoid this? Well like all good drivers, we must follow the rules.

My 12 page booklet, ‘How to Write in Rhyme Like the Experts’ illustrates the rules in a very simple fashion. It takes you back to basics explaining the role of syllables, stressed and non-stressed, the common types of meter used in the English language, the iamb, the trochee, the spondee, the anapest and the dactyl and what it is we mean by the word ‘foot’.

Dr Seuss, for example was a keen user of the anapest. An anapest is a type of meter. It is made up of three syllables, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. Each group of these 3 syllables is called a foot and Dr Seuss liked to have 4 feet per line.

From ‘Horton Hears a Who’...

|On the fif|teenth of May| in the Jun|gle of Nool|

        1                  2                3              4

|In the heat| of the day| in the cool| of the pool|

        1                  2                3               4

As you can see each |foot| is made up of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable and there are four |feet| to each line. You’ll note that there are also 4 stressed syllables. The story then, is written in anapaestic tetrameter, where tetrameter = four. Monometer = one, Dimeter = two, Trimeter = three etc.

Seuss is a brilliant metrical poet and I would recommend that you read as much of him as you can.

To finish up I would like to highlight what I’ve been talking about by bumbling Seuss’s verse.

On the twelfth of May deep in the Jungle of Nool

In the sweltering heat of the day inside the cool of the pool

Sorry Dr Seuss...

So what’s gone wrong? When I bold the stressed syllables you’ll see that the pattern of stressed to non-stressed syllables is no longer consistent. The meter is muddled, the verse is varied, the beat is bumbled and it just doesn’t make for a smooth ride.

On the twelfth of May deep in the Jungle of Nool

In the sweltering heat of the day inside the cool of the pool

If you write in rhyme and you are interested in learning a bit more about meter then you might like to get a hold of a copy of my booklet. For more information please visit my blog at http://jackiehoskingpoetry.wordpress.com/