Just  want to encourage all of you who are local/ Seattle to catch Sati Mookherjee's reading at University Book Store on October 5th (free but registration required ) Those of you not local, see if you can find the book, titled Eye, at the library or to purchase. She is a graduate of the University of Washington's creative writing program, a delightful reader, and a good friend, brilliant and curious and funny, with an East-Indian background that informs & enriches this book. Be sure to register & be prepared for a memorable reading! 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/university-book-store-presents-sati-mookherjee-tickets-408320957977

SIS-BOOM-BAH TIME!

 

Just want to send you over to Books Around the Table, the blog I share with Julie Paschkis, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, Laura Kvasnosky and Bonny Becker. I'm celebrating the publication of my fifth picture book, EEK! A Noisy Journey from A to Z, co-written with Julie P. and blessed with her charming illustrations. Please read what I have to say over there about the art of collaboration, which is all about finding someone you are in sync with in terms of priorities - for Julie P. and I, it's a matter of playfulness and of diving into language and coming up refreshed! Click here for the link. And below are a few sneak-peek pages: 

Enjoy! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eek! and Hurrah, Huzzah, Wahoo!

 IT'S HERE!!!

Author copies of my new book, Eek! A Noisy Journey from A to Z, co-authored and illustrated by  Julie Paschkis, arrived today! It's a combination of nonsense, energy and color; it's a story of love and friendship and adventure and misadventure; it's a journey from A to Z, all in sounds, from Achoo to ZZZZ. 

I can't wait to give a copy of it to Henry and Thea, my six- and three-year-old neighbors. 

Here's a link to Books Around the Table, where Julie Paschkis has just posted her thoughts(and several illustrations) from Eek! https://booksaroundthetable.wordpress.com/2020/08/27/eek/

 Here's a link to a starred review of the book at Kirkus (sneak peek: "An absolute zoo of an ABC book - in the best possible way.") 

Thanks to all the people at Peachtree for getting this book out into the world. And thanks to Julie Paschkis - again - of course! Julie's artwork is always so invigorating - the publisher, Peachtree, even chose one of the illustrations from Eek! to be the cover of their Fall 2020 catalog.  ♥️

Whoop-dee-do, hubba hubba, hot-diggity-dog, la-di-dah, yippee, YAHOO!

Poetry Friday: Ciardi, Reid, Brown...and Paschkis!

 
Today, I'm going to send you over to Books Around the Table, a Wordpress blogsite I share with four other writers, because this whole month we've been posting some of our favorite kids' poems. Specifically, I'm going to link you to the post by the multi-talented author and illustrator Julie Paschkis, because I love her choices: a poem by John Ciardi, a wordplay delight by Alistair Reid, and a poem (and book) completely new to me by Margaret Wise Brown. Julie P. recites that last poem to the crows in her neighborhood.

To lure you in, I'll post the Margaret Wise Brown poem here, but take the time to read Julie's choices - then, if you have time, click on the links she lists where each one of us (Bonny Becker, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, Laura Kvasnosky and I) posted a few favorites.

Little Old Rook

Little Old Rook

Where do you look? 

At the very last page

Of this very same book

Said the Little Old Rook.  

from Where Have You Been? by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Barbara Cooney

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The Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted today by the incomparable Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Head over there to see what other people have posted. Jama's blog always puts a smile on my face and often makes me hungry!  Thanks, Jama, for hosting!

Poetry Friday - IT'S CYBILS NOMINATION TIME!

ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS FOR THE 2019 CYBILS NOMINATIONS! 
OCTOBER 15 IS THE DEADLINE 

ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS

TO NOMINATE YOUR FAVORITES

Such fun! Don't you love nominating your favorite children's books of the year for the annual Cybils Awards? It means a lot to me to shine a light on my favorites, especially if they've been flying a little under the radar. Sometimes it's important to pull for the underdogs, right? Time for some sunshine, favorites!

Of course, many of my favorites are books of poetry, and it's wonderful to see 33 books already nominated in the Poetry category. But there are SO many more that need to be nominated, and OCTOBER 15TH is the last day for nominations, so don't delay. You'll find all the information you need at the Cybils website, including an FAQ page in case you end up with questions.

Here's a description of the kind of books which qualify for the Poetry category, offered up by Bridget Wilson, this year's Poetry Chairperson:

What belongs in Poetry? 

• Anthologies or collections written by multiple authors
• Anthologies or collections written by a single author
• Novels in verse or verse novels
• Some poetry will have illustrations. Some will not.

• Verse written for children and young adults 
• The audience can be toddlers, preschoolers, elementary, middle grade, or young adult.
• Poetry does accept eBooks. 

I've been busy down at my local library, reading through the newest children's books (nominated books need to have been published between Oct. 16, 2018 and Oct. 15, 2019)  trying to get a handle on what to nominate in the Poetry category.

Right now, on my shelf of Still-Must-Reads, I have an anthology called Thanku: Poems of Gratitude, put together by Miranda Paul. It has poems by many fine poets, including Naomi Shihab Nye, an outstanding poet for both children and adults. I'm also looking forward to reading Marilyn Singer's Wild in the Streets: 20 Poems of City Animals and  Margarita Engle's Dreams from Many Rivers: A Hispanic History of the United States Told in Poems. Loved Boom! Bellow! Bleat!: Animal Poems for Two or More Voices by Georgia Heard - definitely would  love to hear kids perform those! Also loved The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander - that's one I just might nominate, especially if I don't see anyone else nominating it. It deserves to be considered.  

I have no individual poem to post today for Poetry Friday. Just want to encourage you to click here for the Cybils website and get busy nominating your favorite kids books of 2019. 

Today's Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Catherine over at Reading to the Core. Head over there to see what other people have posted. And thanks, Catherine!
  

Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver Among the Trees

The poem I’m posting for today's Poetry Friday is pure Mary Oliver. Along with Kay Ryan, Oliver is the poet whose work I hope children learn to love as they become young adults, and I've chosen  “When I Am Among the Trees” because it does what a poem does best:

• Takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary
• Starts exactly where it should, with real-world details rather than abstractions, by naming the specific trees - willows, honey locusts, beeches, oaks pine
• Has the courage to be full-hearted and to address life’s large complications. 

I found Oliver’s poem recently while reading Maria Popova’s Brainpickings. It moved me because I know that this fall I’ll be taking many walks among trees - here in the Pacific Northwest the maples are already beginning the turn from green to red - it’s a wonder-filled season for walking. 

Some of the walks will begin at lunch time, because I love to see the kids at Columbia Elementary - just around the block from our house - racing around full of the dickens on the playground during lunch recess. Maybe I’ll head down to the fishermans’ terminal. Maybe past that cedar-shingled house on North St. that always reminds me of my years in Berkeley. Or maybe west on Connecticut St. to see the bicycle nailed up in a tree, the one that’s kiddie-corner from the garden decorated with pieces of an old boiler that blew up....

Chances are I’ll collect a few leaves, a few acorns, a few pine cones along the way. And I’ll think about Mary Oliver, how she trained both her body and her soul to see the world. I’ll consider how the trees might help me fill with light. 

  Hope you have some trees to walk among, too. 

—————————

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver
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Today’s Poetry Friday host is Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink. Head over there to see what other people have posted. 

Poetry Friday: Tulips by A.E. Stallings

Tulip Fields in the Skagit Valley, Northwest Washington

There was no doubt in my mind what poem I wanted to share this week for Poetry Friday. I can feel something new in my bones and in my head and in my skin and my lungs: Spring is coming, bringing the daffodils and tulips. Glory be, hip, hip, hooray, hallelujah!

 

Tulips

By A. E. Stallings

 

The tulips make me want to paint,

Something about the way they drop

Their petals on the tabletop

And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,

Something about their pallid stems

Wearing decay like diadems,

Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist

As if to catch the last applause,

And drink the moment through long straws,

And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,

The tulips make me want to see—

The tulips make the other me

(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

The one who can’t tell left from right),

Glance now over the wrong shoulder

To watch them get a little older

And give themselves up to the light.

------------------------------------

Poetry Friday this week is being hosted by Robyn over at Life on the Deckle Edge. Head over there to see what other people have posted. And if you're in the mood, check out a few sources of inspiration I'm sharing (including this poem) over at Books Around the Table.

Poetry Friday: In the MIddle of Winter, A Summer Day



 

Well, I've had the holidays so I've not posted recently. I've had a busy few weeks. And...and, and. Excuses, excuses.  But the news that Mary Oliver died has nudged me into a Poetry Friday post.

 

I can sometimes be cynical. I can sometimes be satisfied with what amounts to clever wordplay  in my own poetry. I'm terrified of sentimentality. But the poem you see below, written by Mary Oliver, full of sentiment, is not sentimental. It's also more direct with its final question than I normally like, being a fan of indirection. Still, I like it. It's clean and clear - and it's clearly felt. The description of the grasshopper is not too embroidered - it's fresh and clean. Strong descriptions which are free of aggressive adjectives are rare. This poem has been a favorite of mine for quite a few years and - since the death of my mom - has floated up to the surface again. Now it's coupled in my mind with the death of the poet.

Here it is, hope it gives you pause, and hope you enjoy it.


The Summer Day

Who made this world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

                                      -- Mary Oliver

Poetry Friday is being hosted this week at Going to Walden. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

 

Poetry Friday - Patrick Kavanagh's Childhood Christmas

It's been a long time since I posted here at The Drift Record, spending most of my blog-time over at Books Around the Table  ( my most recent post over there: all about a gingerbread house contest! ) But today, rather late in the day, I want to share a poem by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. As usual, I'm posting a poem I wish I had written - this one, in particular, has such sweetness behind it, such open joy, it's not ashamed to be nostalgic, to talk about lost innocence. But it's also not afraid to go a little dark.  Hope you enjoy it. If you scroll down all the way, you'll see a link to the Wikipedia page about him - his formal education stopped in the fifth grade! - but for The Drift Record, I just want the poem to say its piece.  Wishing you all Happy Holidays and a fulfilling new year - 2019!

A Christmas Childhood

by Patrick Kavanagh

I

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost –
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven’s gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw –
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood’s. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,
Or any common sight, the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

II

My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.

And old man passing said:
‘Can’t he make it talk –
The melodion.’ I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife’s big blade –
There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

[From Collected Poems (2004). Edited by Antoinette Quinn, Allen Lane. An imprint of Penguin Books.]

 Patrick Kavanagh

He looks like someone who could give us a good poem at the local pub, doesn't he?

 Click here for a link to Kavanagh's biography at Wikileaks. Click here to go to Books Around the TAble and read about those gingerbread houses. And click here to head over to Laura Shovan's blog, where you can read what other people have posted for Poetry Friday.

Poetry Friday: Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye

A little over a year ago, I posted this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye after hearing that she had been chosen to deliver the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture in 2018. Then I found out the location at which she would speak: Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. - my new home town!

Well, two weeks ago she delivered her talk to an enthusiastic crowd, and I attended with my good friend and fellow writer, Laura Kvasnosky.We both scribbled notes as she talked about the joys of writing poetry for children. Her lecture was most notable for its anecdotes about school visits and interactions with kids - I'm hoping Laura will write about it this week on our shared blog, Books Around the Table, so I won't go into specifics here. But I do want to repost this poem, my favorite of Nye's, titled "Two Countries.".As an Arab-American, Nye spoke passionately at WWU about her own two countries - Palestine and the United States - and about the need to be open-armed and generous-spirited about immigrants during this difficult period in America's history when intolerance and xenophobia are rearing their ugly heads.  Here is the poem I love, and I love it not only for its message (that we live in our own "skin," our bodies, but the world is larger, there are other travelers)  but for its technical precision - the abundant internal rhymes and near rhymes (step/swept/slept, known/nose/dome, rope/hope/road, own/alone) which make it both song and poem.

TWO COUNTRIES by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers—silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by the marvelous Jama Kim Rattigan over at her blog, Jama's Alphabet Soup. Head over there now to see what other people have posted.  And you might enjoy this interview of Nye at the On Being Project site.

Happy Birthday, Lee!

Happy Birthday, Lee Bennett Hopkins! 

Today is the birthday of poet and anthologist-extraordinaire Lee Bennett Hopkins. To celebrate, I'm offering up readers of The Drift Record his poem about spring, titled appropriately "Spring."  No doubt at all that it will be posted by other Poetry Friday contributors - we're celebrating him today and honoring his presence among us. One of my favorite birthday tributes to Lee comes via a YouTube video posted by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater - click on that link to see 1st graders reciting one of Lee's poems ("Librarian") and singing Happy Birthday. Such a sweet bunch singing to such a sweet poet!

Spring 

Roots 

sprouts 

buds 

flowers 

always---

always---

cloud-bursting showers

rhymes

April fools

fledglings on wing

no thing 

is 

newer

or 

fresher

than

spring.

              ---Lee Bennett Hopkins (from Sharing the Seasons, 2009) 

Thank you, Lee, for inviting us to share your love of poetry, your delight, your energy, your enthusiasm.

One of my favorites of Lee's own work, a memoir: Been to Yesterdays (1995)

       

 I'm proud to have a poem of mine in Lee's upcoming anthology A Bunch of Punctuation, due out this summer.  Can't wait to see it! Here's the cover: 

Whee! Love this!!

 Today's Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Robyn Hood Black. Head over to her blog to see what other people have posted! 

Poetry Friday: Walter de la Mare

Illustration by Belarusian Artist Anna Silivonchik

Over at Books Around the Table this week, I wrote about the extraordinary fact that Moscow experienced only six minute of sunlight this December - six minutes for the whole month. That's the time it takes to soft-boil an egg...divided by 31 days. You can head over to Books Around the Table to read my thoughts about how much we all need sunlight during the winter - bottom line is this: BUNDLE UP, GET OUTSIDE, GO FOR A WALK. 

But here at The Drift Record's Poetry Friday, it's all about poetry - hurrah! Here is a seasonal favorite of mine from Walter de la Mare. I love the mood, the unusual rhyme scheme (AABCB) and oh, the strange and wonderful ending with its unexpected metrical shift (not to mention the alliteration before the white moon...sigh....)  Enjoy! 

              WINTER
 

Clouded with snow

The cold winds blow,

And shrill on leafless bough

The robin with its burning breast

Alone sings now.

The rayless sun,

Day's journey done,

Sheds its last ebbing light

On fields in leagues of beauty spread

Unearthly white.

Thick draws the dark,

And spark by spark,

The frost-fires kindle, and soon

Over that sea of frozen foam

Floats the white moon.

              Walter de la Mare

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 The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by Carol of Beyond LiteracyLink. Head over there to see what other people have posted. 

Poetry Friday: Bomb Cyclones - Say What?

What a bomb cyclone looks like from the sky...

 Out here on the Left Coast, we've heard about the winter storms hitting New England. One day last week the high temperature in Montpelier, VT, was -1. That was the HIGH temperature. Low was  -17!! And this week we're hearing about hurricane force winds combining with those freezing temperatures. Weathermen are talking about bomb cyclone conditions. "Bomb cyclones"?

...and from below!

I'm going to try to remember not to complain about the Pacific Northwest's relatively mild winters. For now, I send warm wishes, along with wishes for warmth, to all my friends and colleagues at Vermont College of Fine Arts who are meeting for their Winter Residency. Warm hugs to, to my daughter and her family in gobsmacked Boston. Bundle up, sweet people, and have a few cups of cocoa!!

VCFA in the snow....

Here is a poem for Poetry Friday, written by Mary Oliver.

White-Eyes

In winter
   all the singing is in
       the tops of trees
           where the wind bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes
       among the branches.
            Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep
   but he's restless---
       he has an idea,
            and slowly it unfolds
       
from under his beating wing
    as long as he stays awake.
        But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
     In the pine-crown,
         he makes his nest,
             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
     I only imagine his glittering beak
          tucked in a white wing
               while the clouds---

which he has summoned
     from the north---
          which he has taught
               to be mild, and silent---

thicken, and begin to fall
     into the world below
         like stars, or the feathers
              of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent---
         that has turned itself
              into snow.

Bird Print in Snow (photograph by Joe Sebastiani)

Mary Oliver 

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by Catherine at Reading to the Core. Head over there to see what other people have posted. And, since we're still only four days in, I wish you a happy, healthy and creative new year. 2018!!!