Tweetspeak Poetry

National Poetry Month Book Giveaway—Tell Us Your Personal Poetry Story to Enter!

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How to Write a Poem How to Read a Poem How to Write a Form Poem Book Trio Giveaway

National Poetry Month Book Giveaway

We’re giving away your choice of two books from the popular “How To” trio. Just tell us your personal poetry story to enter the giveaway—for a chance to win a poetry pair!

• Please read the guidelines below to be sure you understand what we mean by “your personal poetry story.” Thanks!

The “How To” Trio Includes

1. How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry”

TR-How to Read a Poem (front) outlined 2

2. How to Write a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem “Introduction to Poetry”

How to Write a Poem 367 high

3. How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms

How to Write a Form Poem Cover-367

Read more about the “How To” trio here.

How to Enter the Book Giveaway

1. In the comment box on this post, tell us your personal poetry story. Consider adding details like:

• the first poem you ever fell in love with
• who brought you to poetry (or did you find it on your own?)
• whether you came willingly—or whether you were wooed or taken by poetry surprise
• how poetry is currently a part of your life

OR

2. Alternately, you could tell us your personal poetry story in the form of a poem. (But, of course!)

3. Post your personal poetry story by April 30, 2021.

How to Win

We will enter you for a random chance to win your choice of two books from the “How To” trio, if you tell us your personal poetry story in either prose or poetry. Just put your entry in the comment box below!

> Note, we will only enter those who actually tell us their personal poetry story, in prose or poem form. In other words, we want to hear about how you came to poetry and/or how it is currently a part of your life.

> Random poems or prose, nice as they might be, will not qualify.

> Books only ship in the U.S. But you can get featured regardless of where you are in the world!

We Might Ask Permission to Tell Your Story

Regardless of whether you end up being the winner of two titles from the book trio, we might ask permission to tell your personal poetry story (or share your poem)—in full or in part. So feel free to be… colorful, intriguing, surprising, funny, tender, or poetic in the telling!

Your Story Encourages Others in Their Poetry Journey

Telling your personal poetry story encourages others who are already on their own poetry journeys. And for those who aren’t yet on the journey, it can be a lovely invitation to dip in for the first time. We look forward to hearing your story!

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Comments

  1. Tammy Cook says

    I fell in love with La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats as an adult student taking an English Lit class at a community college. The class was part of the basic gen ed required of everyone working towards an Associates Degree. My degree program was Human Services, but I was enthralled by Keat’s poetry. The language and imagery awoke something inside of me that I had never experienced as an avid fiction reader. That poem brought me to tears, and I became a poetry reader after I read it in class. I have recently begun writing poetry at a life stage where I have little time to write anything else. I find it easy to compose a poem in between household chores and caring for an aging husband. Most importantly, I’m finding that it helps me cope with the challenges of my own aging process.

    Reply

  2. Patty Rieman says

    I AM FROM— Where I’m From: Inviting Students’ Lives into the Classroom (Christensen, p.18-21)

    I am from strong women and absent men, cats and books, from copper-bottomed pots and hand towels (which are not the same as dish towels!)

    I am from the tiny apartment on the second floor of that old white house, barely room to turn around. And a homecoming, prom, and penny carnival queen sister while I won spelling bees.

    I am from the roses in Aunt Kay’s yard and
    The lilac tree whose graying, wizened limbs amazed us each year by blooming.

    I’m from cribbage, euchre, double solitaire, and “GO BLUE!”

    I’m from goofy klutziness that we called doing a Mrs. Goose, comparing bruises at get-togethers, stubbornness and getting the giggles, and from reading on the couch with a cat on my lap. From shivering in the weak April sun trying to get the first sunburn of the year and from being the first in the neighborhood to grill outdoors in the spring—snow, or no snow!

    I’m from “remember, it’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man” and “boring people get bored,” or, “there’s no such thing as don’t like!”

    Or singing, “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”

    I’m from a dime in the birthday cake and two weeks at Beaver Island every summer.

    I’m from Ann Arbor and Dexter and the Isle of Man; Porterhouse steak, fried green tomatoes, and licking the pan after making fudge

    Grandma’s letters to me packed away in a dusty old box where I hope I can still find them, on the wall are pictures of Mom when she was well and happy, in my heart are memories of Mom as she lay dying. What else didn’t she tell us?

    I’m from a love of education and no suffering of fools, from self-reliance and the desire to give back. I am from strong stock.

    Reply

    • Sandra Heska King says

      I love this. I knew you were from Michigan at this line: I’m from cribbage, euchre, double solitaire, and “GO BLUE!”

      (GO GREEN)

      Shivering in the April sun and grilling in the spring–snow or no snow. We also sang “Mares eat oats . . ” Never did the dime in the birthday cake, though. The part about your grandmother is tender.

      Thanks so much for sharing this. I’m from northern Michigan, lived in Ann Arbor, Ypsi, and Milan.

      Thanks for sharing this.

      But Go Green! 🙂

      Reply

    • L.L. Barkat says

      Cool poem, Patty! 🙂 (And very tender at the end.)

      Can you tell us your personal poetry story? How did you come to engage with poetry? We’re fascinated by the ways people come to poetry (and why they stay with it).

      Reply

      • Patty Rieman says

        The very first poem I read was on cross-stitch hanging in my grandmother’s hallway that is now in MY hallway! She was amazed I could read it in kindergarten; who knows if I’d memorized it? “Come, dear old friends, Drive up in state. Your welcome extends, Both early and late. I think actually my grandma was a great influence, because she gave me a book of poems for children in 1966 for Easter. It was there I first read about Winken, Blinken, & Nod, AA Milne, and the Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee. I still have that wonderful book, now falling apart after decades of love, with my beloved Grandma’s handwriting in the flyleaf!

        Reply

          • Patty Rieman says

            Thank you! She was so important to me, my mom’s mom. She was unconditional love and a much-needed constant in my chaotic growing up.

        • Patty Rieman says

          Oops! Add quotes after the word “late”!
          Why do I stay with poetry now? Because it’s music and color in words. Because I teach future teachers, and there’s so much of life to be celebrated with poetry–I want them to rejoice and laugh and even cry a little with their own students! Because predictable books with rhyme help little ones develop reading fluency. And because poems help us process our feelings, paint pictures of our souls. I don’t think I’d have survived a rough adolescence without journaling and poetry.

          Reply

          • Crystal Rowe says

            “ because poems help us process our feelings, paint pictures of our souls.”
            Oh this is just the most beautiful description of poetry!

            I also used poetry as a way to process a rough adolescence. It was such a gift to me, and I had forgotten how much of a gift until I just recently revived my love of poetry.

    • Jody Collins says

      Patty, these lines resonated with me, “I’m from a love of education and no suffering of fools, from self-reliance and the desire to give back. I am from strong stock.”

      I’ve written my own form of this I am From poem modeled on the original from George Ella Lyon and it was such an enlightening exercise!

      Reply

      • Patty Rieman says

        I forgot to cite Lyons, too! I really enjoy seeing my (college) students’ responses in reflective poetry like this, I learn so much about them. And Christensen is one of my heroes!

        Reply

  3. Ms. Leah says

    I am Leah!
    Leah, I am!
    My love of poetry started with fam.
    A favorite of mine is Green Eggs and Ham!

    As I grew up and got to 5th grade,
    my teacher grabbed me with poems she made.
    A journal we started for her in class,
    and my love soared with each page passed.

    Mrs O’Brien
    My teacher of English class
    Poetry she taught

    Now, I’m a para in a 5th grade classroom,
    and convince children poetry does not mean doom!
    We read poetry and tear it apart,
    to dig deep a meaning to fill the heart.

    Reply

  4. Cheryl Mann says

    I dabbled a little in poetry all the way back to elementary school, when words always entertained as well as intrigued me. But nursing school, a busy nursing career, and raising a family left little time for playing with words on paper. My daughter has been blessed with a writing talent far greater than mine, and reading her work has inspired me to dust off my pen. I have found writing poetry to be a superior form of therapy for me. My ADD mind is generally roaring like a hurricane and condensing my thoughts and feelings into poetry helps clarify and distill my emotion down to manageable portions. The words often fall like tears onto my paper, and editing my work is as if I am blotting those tears… When ink and tears are both dry, I have revised my thoughts and my life.
    Writing has thus allowed me to reframe and manage much distress as of late. Being a mom and a nurse during a pandemic has not been the only challenge I have faced. I was recently told, at the age of 51, that I unexpectedly and rather urgently need heart surgery. This is the most current poem-turned-therapist…

    Curtain Time

    My heart and mind become night.
    Do I think dark thoughts;
    Does death stalk me;
    Do I find peace and rest;
    Amidst the cadence of the sterile theater?

    I choose peace.
    I choose the stillness of my beloved lake at dawn,
    Birds quietly stirring from their slumber as the morning mist wanes.

    I choose trust.
    I choose trust in the maestro with his hands in my chest,
    Conducting a symphony to restore the percussion of my life.

    I choose faith.
    I choose faith in the God who created me and guides my life,
    We have more work to do.

    I choose love.
    I choose the love that surrounds me, waiting to exhale,
    As if it starves all fear until I wake.

    Let’s get started,
    Let’s get started,
    Let’s get started.

    I choose peace;
    I choose trust;
    I choose faith;
    I choose love;
    This is my new beginning.

    Reply

    • Patty Rieman says

      Oh, Cheryl, this is so moving! It could be a song, even a hymn! And what a strong, healthy approach to facing the unknown.

      Reply

    • Katie Brewster says

      “When ink and tears are both dry, I have revised my thoughts and my life.”
      Prayers that you will indeed know His peace as you trust with faith in His love:)
      Hoping for healthy days ahead, Cheryl.

      Reply

      • Rebecca D. Martin says

        High school English, and everyone always complained, even laughingly, that the poems didn’t make sense. They were so hard; what were they trying to say? I would sit quiet in my corner desk, keeping the truth to myself: actually, the poems always meant something. They unfurled like flowers on the page before me. One summer, I read Shakespeare on my own, for fun. (I still catch a warm, weighted shift in the air when I think about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and can picture that gorgeous painted cover, feel the blush-colored slip of a book in my hand.)

        In college, majoring in English Ed and then English Lit itself – all the books before me! I thought I loved novels the best. Introduction to Poetry was a sweet breeze, though (I still have the anthology with my markings, my favorites), and oh, Poetry from the North of Ireland. Now that was a class. One week, we were to memorize and recite and present, each student teaching one of Yeats’s poems. I sailed to Byzantium, and talked and facilitated my way through the whole 50-minute period. That old bearded British teacher man smiled wider and wider as the minutes passed. I am still looking to art – and books – to be my singing school.

        Still, life goes on, and reading is a luxury when you work 9-5, which is fine. More of those novels. So many, ravenously. Then the kaleidoscope shifted; I left off working in my early Thirties, ready for a reprieve. I found it in my first baby and in – why had I never thought to read them before? – essays. I tried my hand at them, too, and now that was the genre for me, Annie Dillard and Anne Fadiman at the apex.

        “Do you like to read poetry?” A new friend in those years asked. Well . . . yes. I do love poetry. That old reading table laden with fresh flowering lines from years ago and “Joy, gentle friends! Joy and fresh days of love” accompanying my heart and my mind. But read it in the hours my days? Now? Go to it with a lively hand when an empty hour allows? No, I visited Tinker Creek, rather, or the streets of 1930’s Oxford with Harriet Vane, so many times I had them memorized. “But why not read poetry?” the friend insisted. “If you love it.” The truth: I didn’t know how. Sure, I knew the way to unpack a poem, to make the verse work for the world, for me, but it was work. And I had enough jobs at present. I didn’t know how to find rest in a poem, that kind of work so akin to repose that I might as well be sitting still among a field of wildflowers, a bracing cup of black caffeine tea sharpening my senses.

        What would it take, then? A pandemic. A sudden shut-down, a stretch of months at home that stretched on and on, and a slew of senseless deaths, soon enough, more weight than my emotions could bear. My appetite for words slowed and changed, no longer consuming books by the day, but sinking into long stories. (Michael D. O’Brien’s Island of the World sorrowed and sang me through the second, third, fourth month of all that confusion, fear, and pain) . . . and, unexpectedly, into verse. I began thinking in lines, in interior rhythm and rhyme and enjambment. I began writing in verse when the essays wouldn’t come. After all, who could make any comprehensible sense of Covid deaths following a funeral or the lungs of George Floyd crying for air?

        It was like they were waiting for me: all the poems I’d ever known and loved, and ones I’d never known. They were everywhere I looked, the poems and the poets. Everywhere I read, and everywhere I wanted to read. Seamus Heaney and Edwin Muir and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Edna St. Vincent Millay and Billy Collins and Naomi Shihab Nye. Poems like air, like life. So I guess I didn’t make them mine, actually. That’s how the poetry took ownership of me.

        Reply

  7. Crystal Rowe says

    The table was set with our favorite teapot and mismatched teacups with saucers picked up in our latest thrifting adventure. Poetry books were scattered around the table, waiting to be opened and a favorite poem read. I called my children to the table for our first “Poetry Tea” and they ran through the house as though it were the best day of the year. After pouring tea in everyone’s cup, and passing around the cookies I grabbed at the store the night before, I invited them to pick up a book and choose a poem to read out loud. To break the ice, I went first, reading a poem that they had learned to recite a year ago—one we all knew and loved:

    There is no Frigate like a Book
    To take us Lands away
    Nor any Coursers like a Page
    Of prancing Poetry –
    This Traverse may the poorest take
    Without oppress of Toll –
    How frugal is the Chariot
    That bears the Human Soul –
    ~Emily Dickinson

    Once I had gone first, they were eager to read the poems they had selected, and we spent an hour and a half reading poetry to each other on that rainy afternoon.

    I hadn’t read poetry in years. My high school English teacher’s question of “But what does it mean?” still rings loud in my ears, but this time with my children made me start to see that poetry is not about meaning; poetry is about emotion. Prioritizing poetry for my children has become my own gateway to loving poetry. The more poetry I read to them, the more I want to read poetry for myself.

    I started a poetry journal a few weeks ago and am learning to write my own poetry. There’s something so freeing about being able to write all my emotions without worrying about whether or not it’s appropriate. Poetry is the heartbeat of humanity, I’d like to think.

    Reply

  8. Andrew Guzaldo says

    “Affiance of Poetry”
    “Greater than the achievement of poetry I cannot envisage,
    Poetry enters ones heart and soul brings life to one’s melancholy,
    It can come into your life leaving you with a promise of future,
    So that one will be clutched to affiance of poetic peroration,
    I am now that which is clutched to such an affiance,
    As that of a nest in the tree clenched to sapling twigs,
    And so I shall vow to accept this affiance for all perpetuity”
    By Andrew Guzaldo 03/03/2019 ©

    Reply

  9. Alex says

    I started writing poetry in grade school. In fact, I won a contest in second grade for a poem. It’s first lines are: “When I was just a little kid/ I did a lot, that’s what I did.” I went on to describe an almost godlike me who created all sorts of things. When I showed it to my mother she made a ‘correction’ I knew was wrong, but caved to her authority. I had written ‘I made all the churches where preachers preach,” which she suggested I change to “clerics preach.” Bad decision, and an important lesson.

    I wrote on and off through high school and college (where I studied with Conrad Hilberry, one of the most generous poets…and, if one can have a favorite…he’s mine). I quit writing when school was over and life was ho hum humdrum. Then one wonderful spring day I was stuck in an incredibly boring lecture at a conference being held at a building on the grounds of the West Virginia State Capitol. Glancing outside, I saw a stately oak inviting me out. So I brought the pad and pencil I had been doodling with and sat under that tree the rest of the afternoon. There, I decided to make a poem for my two kids. Then six and four. It began “Archibald Pedalman lived in a cup. When he tried to see out he could only see up.” It was a decent kid’s poem. I thought, with a good illustrator, it would make a fun book, but I never moved on that. It was the first of many poems I wrote for my kids. They were coming thick and fast, it was like I was in the zone for a couple years, then…nothing…till COVID. I have been working hard every day, now writing ‘adult’ poems which are helping.me through these strange times. A few people are encouraging me to submit somewhere, but…I don’t think they’re yet ready to meet strangers. But I’m working toward going public sometime!

    Reply

  10. deb y felio says

    What does a little girl know of love? Something to hold onto . Something for comfort. Poetry was that for me – short to the point – no waiting for the mystery. Just beauty in my hands, and if I could say them, could memorize them I could hold the beauty within myself. Because we didn’t have books of poems in my home, I knew I would always need to give them back.

    Fourth grade I heard Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley for the first time – read at Halloween – and after that, we students would begin to plead for it beginning the first of October, and then all join in the chorus “ef you don’t watch out.” It was in that recitation with classmates that gave me a sense of belonging.

    Sea Fever by John Masefield was the first poem I memorized – before then it was states and capitals, Presidents of the United States and the Gettysburg address. This was an accidental find in the library – I copied it down to carry with me. The beach, the water was always a refreshment for me, and this again was my way to have it with me. It was also the first “literary’ gift I gave my parents – a picture of a tall ship sailing, cut from a magazine and pasted onto the the page and the poem in my best 6th grade handwriting pasted on top of the ship.

    Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field was the next poem I memorized. The images stay with me to this day. Poetry became those dusty toys. Throughout high school and into college there were too many other classes – the sciences, the maths, the composition, the foreign languages. No time or courage to explore poetry beyond the requisite introductions. No one was really saying to me I could write poetry. That was for those creative types who somehow found people in their lives whispering write.

    When I began teaching high school in Holly Springs, Ms, it was 90% African American and not a single book in the library by a person of color. I spent the next 2 weekends typing up poems selected from Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets, a text from a Southern Literature class I had taken as a final elective before graduating, typing them onto purple mimeograph stencils to be run off on Monday morning in the school office. Twenty pages of typed and retyped packets, for twenty-two students, to have an introduction to their own heritage in poetry. The next year, teachers were offered some free classes through the local university – no credit which meant no risk for me. I took a creative writing class and wrote poetry and prose. It opened a window for a short time, then closed again. There just wasn’t going to be time to write poetry and do everything else I was supposed to do.

    That was 45 years ago. Looking back I see times I sneaked it in – to read or write. Letters to grandparents about their first grandson were often in poems, college sorority ‘songs’ were my poetry set to commercial theme music, poems written for celebrations, family member memorials, as recognition for the ‘greatest generation’ being recognized at an annual church dinner. So little kept. That wasn’t how I was raised – not practical.

    Right now I have a more steady relationship with poetry and a community of friends who have been mutual support during Covid. But like a lover rediscovered after years of separation, there are thoughts of really how much time we have left together. And like newly rediscovered lovers, we’re making those sweet and bittersweet moments poetry.

    Reply

  11. Tatiana Lyulkin says

    POETRY IN BLOOM

    Poetry is
    Dancing in the rain,
    Watching the stars at night,
    Planting the seeds in the ground
    Like the droplets
    Of life giving water
    That make the flowers bloom.

    Poetry is
    Sharing scary stories
    By the campfire
    That keeps the darkness at bay,
    It’s a way
    To connect with my past
    And summon the future,
    To heal and to grow
    And learn new things.

    Poetry is
    Owning my life,
    Living my truth,
    It’s taking a step
    Into the unknown
    Just to see
    Where the road
    Will take me.

    Poetry is
    My ” me ” time,
    My safe space,
    My flowers in bloom.
    It’s as close
    As I can come
    To having a perfect day.

    Reply

  12. L.L. Barkat says

    Just popping in to say that we’ll be running an announcement post that notes the winner (congratulations, Alex!) next week.

    And we have a little surprise coming for all of you, too. (Our patrons just got a sneak peek of the surprise, here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50984539 )

    See you next week with the announcement post! 🙂 And, Alex, we’ll be in touch soon.

    Reply

  13. Grace Angel says

    Thank you for sharing your beginnings with poetry! I loved how different they all were. How the power of poetry reaches us in all stages of our lives – in our youth and in our third act!

    In Grade school, we were made to memorize poems for recitations. I loved Emily Dickenson because I understood her- she spoke plain yet layered with meaning. “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me” – this opening line just blew me away. How can you say so much in just one line!
    I wrote mostly teenage angst and love poems when I began. Short and sweet or bittersweet!
    I rediscovered it again later in adulthood with the spoken poetry open readings in San Francisco.
    Where I would go and listen to other poets reveal their most inner secrets & emotions. I kept a notebook of all my scribblings and was even brave enough a few times to read my poems on open mic nights.
    Now later in life, I’m writing again and filling up my notebook. Writing poems, haibun, some flash fiction, and experimenting on form and reaching for more inspirations from my past.
    I enjoy getting the prompts and often try my bit at it. And I’m taking more writing classes mostly poetry classes on zoom!
    Thank you again for sharing your stories!

    Reply

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