Playing Exquisite Corpse for National Poetry Month!

We have come to the end of National Poetry Month (ok technically yesterday was)  and i’m going to end it with a fun poetry related game called Exquisite Corpse.  You can click here to get more information about this game, including history and explanation of the name.  It is a great way to come up with some truly creative phrases and can help you think outside the box if you are stuck on your own writing.

You will need a to find you some willing participants.  Thankfully I work with some fun people who jumped at the chance to help me out. Then you will need either some index cards, sticky notes, blank pieces of paper, anything you can pass out for the other people to write on.  I used sticky notes.  You will need to decided on a sentence structure.  The website used the example of “Adjective, Noun, Verb, Adjective, Noun”  so I decided to use that same structure but you can use whatever combination that you want.  To make things easier on my coworkers I went ahead and wrote on each sticky note what type of word they would be writing down.  The most important thing for you and your participants to remember is not to share what word you are writing since you don’t want to influence what someone else chooses to write down.  Once everyone was done I read them our basic sentence.

Delightful Room Dance Fast Cats.  I have to admit I would never thought to write those words together!  That is why it is important to not influence anyone else with what word you write, the less they know about the other words the more creative the sentence comes out.  You can then go back and add articles such as “The”, “A”, “Is”, or change verb tense to make your sentence flow better.  Our final product is “A delightful room of dancing with fast cats.”  Hope you have fun making your own Exquisite Corpse  sentences.  It has been a blast writing creatively with everyone!

Making Magnetic Poetry for National Poetry Month!

Howdy!  This week in our continuing celebration of April being National Poetry Month we are going to be talking magnetic poetry kits.  Magnetic poetry kits are basically just magnets with words on them that allow you to write and rewrite poems, songs, or just funny sayings over and over again.  You can leave a surprise poem for someone else to find or just have fun creating for yourself.  But if you want to be even more creative you can make your own magnetic poetry kit, that way you have the exact words you want.  All you need is some old magazines that you no longer want to read (do not use library magazines or you will end up having to pay for them!), scissors, magnetic strips/tape or just regular magnets.  I used magnetic tape that was sticky on one side but if yours isn’t you will need either double-sided tape or glue.

Spend some time looking through the magazines looking for words that you would say or ones that just amuse you even.  Cut out anything you think you might want to use.  I didn’t plan out what I was going to have my poem be I just started cutting out words then figured out later what I wanted to say.

As you can see I picked some very random words.  Like I said earlier I used magnetic tape that was sticky on one side so all I had to do was stick the words I wanted to use to the magnetic tape.  I did have to glue down one word because it was having problems sticking but other than that this was super easy to do!

My poem is currently on the side of a book cart.  I tend to go for poems that don’t rhyme but you can create whatever you want!  If you want them to stay longer you can put modge podge glue over the top of the words, just make sure it is dry before you start using the magnets to create beautiful works of art.  Hope you are having as much fun with poetry month as I am!

Blackout Poetry for National Poetry Month!

Today in our continued celebration of April being National Poetry Month I thought I would talk to you about blackout poetry.  It is a fun and creative way to turn old books and newspapers into brand new art!

All you need is either old books you no longer want or old newspapers that no one is no longer wanting read (since you will be coloring in them make sure not to use library books or books that don’t belong to you).  Then using a marker you cover over all the words that are not a part of your poem.  I went through with a pencil and circled the words of my poem first so I wouldn’t accidentally color over them.  The best part is not only can you be creative with the words on the page, connecting words from different sentences together, but you can also be creative with how you color over the other words.  You can do anything from just coloring over in a block, to making a specific design, to making up your own shapes.  It is all up to you!  Here are two poems I did.  Hope you have fun making your own blackout poetry!

National Poetry Month!

April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate this special month I will be posting something poetry related each week for the rest of the month.  I though I would start with a classic that was done last year during National Poetry Month:  Book Spine Poetry!  It is simple, you arrange book spines together to make a poem.  Here is my book spine poem

I had a lot of fun just wondering through the YA area reading titles and coming up with creative uses for them.  Try it out for yourself and don’t forget to comment below with your own poetry.  Happy writing/arranging!

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry month! Last week, I posted some book spine poetry that I made using the titles of books in our collection. This week, I’m inviting you to come down and check out a book to celebrate the month.

Of course, we have collections of poetry, but that wouldn’t be very fun or creative, would it? So instead, I put together a display of novels written entirely in verse. The difference between these books and normal collections of poetry is that in verse novels, all of the individual poems are organized so that they tell a story. Each chapter or section is a different poem and it  makes for a very different, fun reading experience.

I’ve created a display of books showcasing some of our novels:

If you’re interested, please come down to the library and check a few of them out. If you can’t make it down, fill out a book request form and we’ll have it for you the next time we visit your school.

Book Spine Poetry

April is National Poetry Month! It was celebrated for the first time in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. The library has a number of great books of poetry as well as novels in verse that you can check out all month long to celebrate.

If writing poetry is more your style, you can do that too. I, however, have never been very good at it. But I found something I can do: book spine poetry! All you have to do is take a number of books and arrange the spines so that it leaves a poem. Here’s one that I made.

You can use any combination of books.  It might even be fun to try to make a poem out of the titles of poetry books. Leave me a comment and tell me what sort of book spine poem you’ve come up with!