It’s been a busy couple of months, and I have another poem featured this morning by the New York Times’ “Morning Update” newsletter (and in the print edition the next day) in response to last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Behind Capitol Violence, Poet Finds ‘a Speech That Caught the Right Ears’
In an odd turn, I had my first poem in the New York Times last week in the Tech section (random call for hammer poems, of course), and my second is today. They’ve published poems by State Poets/Poets Laureate for Thanksgiving. So Happy Thanksgiving everyone, stay safe.
In this virtual world, I’m doing more class visits via recorded videos and Zoom. It’s especially fun to have questions from students beforehand to incorporate into the presentation, like in this presentation for Creative Writing classes at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa:
Teacher Kourtney Abbotts sent this kind note after using the video for her classes:
“What an incredible day of presentations! You have given my students a whole new perspective for writing and poetry. Thank you for your hard work to make this happen. My kids LOVED the airplane and tornado poems because of the comparisons that you make. We have been talking a lot about comparisons to create more detailed thoughts and ideas.
I appreciate your help to advance the efforts of creative writing. Your writing routine of Monday deadlines is something the students really want to add to the class. We are going to use Mondays to turn in a piece they have worked on over the week. 🙂“
Kourtney Abbotts, Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa
I’ve been part of Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud program as a teaching artist, Finals emcee, and more for 12 years now. It’s a way to get high school students to teach poems to their classmates by memorizing and reciting them. There are prizes, including one student gets to represent the state at the National Poetry Out Loud Finals! It’s brought to us by the wonderful Nebraska Arts Council and here’s a video they made with a snazzy narrator (who you might recognize) telling more about it:
Spending a lot of time at home, I’m grateful for all those being careful out there, not just because I’m a Type 1 Diabetic but for all of us. I ran a writing prompt on guilty pleasures and 80s rock today for the Nebraska Writers Collective which is now available on their YouTube channel, so get to writing!
I have a lesson on writing odes available at Nebraska’s Teacher TV. It’s aimed at middle school students but good for all ages and only 27 minutes long:
We’re closing out National Poetry Month 2020 with a good amount of virtual events! The latest is this week’s Humanities at Home conversation put on by Humanities Nebraska:
A number of readings have, of course, been canceled this spring as we all help prevent the spread of Covid-19. So instead of reading at Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff, we did it virtually with a few poems, some Q&A, and a writing prompt:
I’m honored to be the first entry in the Nebraska Arts Council’s new Studio Clips: Meet Nebraska Artists series. Catch video of me reading some of the poems I’ve been writing from quarantine as well as a writing prompt, plus some Q&A and links on the NAC page:
The Kimball County Visitor Center asked me to write this poem about Nebraska’s highest point. See the video they made here: