Up until a couple of years ago the students I see have long been able to write their names. By the time they get to me, they’re dabbling with different signatures, trying out nicknames, adding hearts to their i‘s, and their jersey number to the end of their names.
I took for granted the amount of practice, skill, and patience it takes to get them to this point until I began my job as an At-Risk Literacy Specialist in the Ypsilanti Community Schools. There are shaky letters, tearful beginnings, long pauses, and lots of questions. There are also smiles, papers held high, and, “Look! Look what I did!” when a name has been written.
What a wonder to see yourself on the page.
Jacqueline Woodson offers a powerful sentiment about writing one’s name for the first time in her book, Brown Girl Dreaming:
On Paper
The first time I write my full name
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson
without anybody’s help
on a clean white page in my composition notebook,
I know
if I wanted to
I could write anything.
Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning,
becoming thoughts outside my head
becoming sentences
written by
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson
Try It
For this week’s prompt, try some name poetry. Here are a few choices to play around with:
- Write a poem about writing your name for the first time.
- Write a bio poem using your name as the title. Simply tell us all about you, including the kinds of details you might include in a bio! Feel free to choose an angle. (A bio poem for your workplace might sound different from a bio poem for your dance class.)
- Write an acrostic poem using the letters in your name.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in our recent poetry prompt. Here’s one from Sandra Heska King we enjoyed:
Roseate Spoonbills
See us standing in the shallows
dressed to kill
in stunning rosy pink
with curled S-necks.
See us sweeping side to side,
scoop and swallow,
measuring our meals
with long-billed spoons.
—Sandra Heska King
Photo By Dark Day, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Post by Callie Feyen, author of The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet.
This is a book about being a teacher, and about being a mother, and, in its way, about being a writer. But it is most fully a depiction of living with a work of literature, about the conversations literature can spark and the memories literature can hold and reconfigure. The acknowledgments suggest that writing this book helped Callie Feyen remember why she loved teaching. Reading it made me remember why I love to read. —Lauren Winner, bestselling author and Associate Professor, Duke Divinity School
- Poetry Prompt: Courage to Follow - July 24, 2023
- Poetry Prompt: Being a Pilgrim and a Martha Stewart Homemaker - July 10, 2023
- Poetry Prompt: Monarch Butterfly’s Wildflower - June 19, 2023
Jake cosmos aller says
Jake cosmos aller
Just a Jake
Always have been
Korean as well
English too
Common enough name
Officially John
Somehow changed to Jake
Maybe just the way it should be
or I like it like that
simply Jake Cosmos Aller
All that there is
Little that is
lots more to come
everywhere I go
Radiating love
Jake Cosmos Aller
L.L. Barkat says
I like the irony of “simply Jake Cosmos Aller,” since the more common name Jake is actually bound to an expansive name (Cosmos)—and, in that way, it’s not simple at all, but contains an intriguing tension that’s hinted at in the dual ethnicity revealed at the opening of the poem. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your name with us! 🙂
Callie Feyen says
I’m wondering about the Someone who changed “John” to “Jack.” That’s a great line!
Thanks for sharing your poem with us!
Sandra Heska King says
Thanks for featuring my poem, Callie.
Just Me
I was supposed to be a Sheryl.
I don’t know why.
It was #149 on the popularity list in 1949.
But my not-aunt named my not-cousin
Sheryl–born one month before I was born
So I became a Sandra.
I don’t know why.
But it was #6 on the popularity list.
I was Sandy–or San–or sometimes Squirt.
But Sandra Lee meant trouble.
I was Miss Heska in nursing school
or sometimes Heska–or Fresca–
and just plain King when I worked
in the operating room after marriage.
An instructor’s typo made me Snady
which became Snady the Chocolate Lady.
There are other Sandras and Sandra Lees
and Sandra Kings and Sandra Lee Kings
but there’s only one Sandra Heska King
AKA SHK.
Just me.
Callie Feyen says
What a great first line! I also like, “my not-aunt named my not-cousin.” This sounds to me like the beginning of a great story.
I wonder what Snady would think about not being named Sheryl. 🙂
Lynn White says
Legacy
Vera Lynn was a famous singer,
the Forces Sweetheart, no less.
My mother was Vera,
so I should be Lynn.
My mother liked things to be
right.
But even more than
the correctness
of Vera and Lynn,
she abhorred diminutives.
They were definitely not
right.
So I must have a name
which could not be shortened.
Joy was a contender, but,
just suppose that
I was a weepy child.
That name would not fit me.
For me it would not have been
right.
She needn’t have worried.
But worry she did.
So, Lynn it was
and Lynn I am.
My legacy
from my
mother.
Callie Feyen says
“My mother was Vera,
so I should be Lynn.
My mother liked things to be right.”
What a striking set of lines.
I also think the rhythm of this poem adds to the strictness and confidence of it.
Thank you for sharing it!
Lynn White says
You’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed.