Word of the week for May 14-20 is “hear.” Write a tanka or other five-line poem using “hear,” tag it #5poem, and tweet it.
5poem WOTW is “hear”
May 14th, 2012Badges/Logos for May 2012 #5lines
May 8th, 2012At long last, I present to you the badges/logos you can use on your blog to show that you are taking part in International Five Line Poetry Month. A huge thanks to my talented poet/designer/programmer friend, T.J. Edge (@ten_ten_ten) for creating these.
Use the code below to add these to your blog. Note that the versions with black behind don’t actually have black behind; use one of those if your blog background is a dark color, then that color will show through for the words on the images. If you need help, give a shout. Enjoy!
Copy and paste this code into your site — Large rectangular logo for blogs with light or white background (text in blue):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_tall_large_lite.png" style="width:206px;height:306px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
small rectangular logo for blogs with light or white background (text in blue):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_tall_small_lite.png" style="width:155px;height:227px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
Copy and paste this code into your site — Large square logo for blogs with light or white background (text in blue):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_square_large_lite.png" style="width:205px;height:236px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
small square logo for blogs with light or white background (text in blue):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_square_small_lite.png" style="width:133px;height:153px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
Copy and paste this code into your site — Large rectangular logo for blogs with dark background (text in white):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_tall_large_dark.png" style="width:206px;height:296px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
small rectangular logo for blogs with with dark background (text in white):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_tall_small_dark.png" style="width:154px;height:222px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
Copy and paste this code into your site — Large square logo for blogs with dark background (text in white):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_square_large_dark.png" style="width:206px;height:236px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
small square logo for blogs with dark background (text in white):
<a href="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/5lines2012/" target="_new"><img src="http://tina.mnnguyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/5_lines_2012_square_small_dark.png" style="width:132px;height:153px;margin-bottom:10px;border:none;" alt="May 2012 International 5 Line Poetry Month" /></a>
5poem WOTW is “coffee”
May 7th, 2012Word of the week for May 7-13 is “coffee.” Write a tanka or other five-line poem using “coffee,” tag it #5poem, and tweet it.
5poem WOTW is “whisper”
April 30th, 2012Word of the week for April 30 – May 6 is “whisper.” Write a tanka or other five-line poem using “whisper,” tag it #5poem, and tweet it.
Make Time for Poetry
April 26th, 2012On April 21, as part of the Couplets blog exchange, Mary Alexandra Agner let me do a guest post on her blog. The article is “Make Time for Poetry.”
5poem WOTW is “spring”
April 23rd, 2012Word of the week for April 23-29 is “spring.” Write a tanka or other five-line poem using “spring,” tag it #5poem, and tweet it.
Featured “Couplets” Poet: Julene Tripp Weaver
April 23rd, 2012
The Poet and Her Father
Today as part of the Couplets poetry blog tour, I’m featuring the poet Julene Tripp Weaver here on my blog. She graciously offered to share three of her poems from her book No Father Can Save Her. The book, a coming of age story told in verse, explores ideas of relationships, sexuality, race relations, and more. The poems I chose were some of my favorites, one from each section in the book, and each is followed with my haiku response in italics. Enjoy!
Teaspoons
Special permission child,
a rare visit to Dad at the Albany Veterans
Hospital. A slow walk, each room
its own tablet of unknown story.
My dad’s room a dose of sorrow
I cannot swallow.
Always a smile for his little girl.
His bone thin arms hold me
against his hard chest.
We will go to the World’s Fair,
his story
I swallow with a smile.
A waterfall crashes inside me.
We stare at the clock tower outside.
My life makes me tired,
so full of its teaspoons of death.
* * *
teaspoons
how the thin bones
hold his story
* * *
Ideal Childhood Except for Hodgkin’s Cancer
Things were not exactly perfect
after Dad hitchhiked across country during the war years
collecting postcards, married to Mom he took our family photos
in front of the house where the old man lived with the magnolia tree.
After he hitchhiked cross-country in the war years
he drove the whole family south to visit the Everglades.
Easter we stood for photos under the magnolia tree at the old man’s house.
I was the star in the lens in front of Daddy’s camera.
When we visited south we walked the paths of the everglades,
Daddy’s break from shoveling snow from our driveway.
I smiled, a bright star in the lens of his camera,
my father with a man’s skills: build, hunt, grow, tend.
His rare break from shoveling snow from our driveway.
I didn’t know how little time we had
together to learn his skills: building, hunting, growing, tending.
He would never have deserted his family.
I didn’t know how little time we had
looking through his yellowing postcards, our family photos.
He didn’t mean to desert us
things were never exactly perfect.
* * *
deserted…
white magnolia blossoms fall
on yellowing family photos
* * *
All I Want
is an open road, an easy fall
into soft grass, sun warming my skin
to freckles. Let me sleep late
between 400-count sheets, eat
strawberry ice cream, talk
of Socrates, sing goddess chants
with morning pancakes.
I love how we sat in a teepee
peeling pomegranates, sharing stories.
How we snap wishbones to decide.
On our lanai, you peel the brown skin
from devil’s club branches, expose
the sacred clasped hands the Native tribes
revere. Its deep earth scent permeates
our living space.
May we always have Broadway tunes
on our tongues, dance steps bending our knees.
Let me have the rusty license plates
from our last car, mountains we climb
to make love, your breath in my ear.
I want a day not on the calendar
a minute devoid of tomorrow.
Let us sit peeling walnuts across the table.
Make a list, careful,
each minute counts.
* * *
mountain peaks
our wishes marked
on the calendar
* * *
About Julene
Julene Tripp Weaver is a native New Yorker who now lives in Seattle and has a private counseling practice. No Father Can Save Her was published by Plain View Press. Her chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues, holds writing from her work through the heart of the AIDS epidemic. Her poems are published in many journals, a few include Qarrtsiluni, Drash, Menacing Hedge, Gutter Eloquence, and Future Earth Magazine; most recently her work is included in Garrison Keillor’s collection, Good Poems American Places, and in the anthology,Wait A Minute, I Have to Take Off My Bra. She does wordplay on Twitter @trippweavepoet.
Featured “Couplets” Poet: Cara Holman
April 19th, 2012Today as part of the Couplets poetry blog tour, I’m featuring the poet Cara Holman here on my blog.
Name
Cara Holman
Where I’m From
I was born in San Francisco, grew up on Long Island, moved back to California to attend college, and then lived in Seattle and Austin, before finally settling in Portland (Oregon!) in 1991.
My Blog
Prose Posies
How We Met
I met Christina in much the same way I’ve met most of my online poetry friends. Her name kept popping up all over the place in haiku journals and online poetry sites, including NaHaiWriMo and Poetic Asides. Soon we became Facebook friends. We both recently had haiku appear together in the March/April 2012 Writer’s Digest magazine.
How Long I’ve Been Writing
After a few awkward attempts at writing poetry in my childhood, I tabled my efforts until 2007, when I joined a writing group for cancer survivors. Over the next three years, and with the constant support and encouragement of my writing group, I first began writing prose, and very soon after that, poetry. It wasn’t until 2010, though, that I turned to haiku and related forms.
What I Write
These days, I mostly write haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun, and rengay. I have tried my hand at a variety of forms though, including triolets, prose poetry, four and twenties, Kelly and Collum lunes, hay(na)ku, Fibonaccis, monotetras, rondeaus, blitz poems, the bop, limericks, cascade poems, sevenlings, and sestinas.
A Poem (Okay, three)
My first published poem:
Sleeping With an Open Window
Frogs, he says
Crickets, I insist
We stop again to listen.
(Four and Twenty, 1:2, November/ December 2008)
A haiku:
another biopsy–
plucking at the flowers
on my hospital gown
(Winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge: Haiku, December 2011)
(Also appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine, March/April 2012)
A tanka:
our favorite walk
by the river–
deep in conversation
we cover
the same old ground
(Second Place, 2011 San Francisco International Competition: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Rengay)
April 17th, 2012
red kite
the way her hand
pulls yours
- April 17, 2012 “feathered poet”
5poem WOTW is “shadow”
April 16th, 2012Word of the week for April 16-22 is “shadow.” Write any tanka, gogyohka, or other five-line poem using “shadow,” tag it #5poem, and tweet it.
