Welcome back to Poetry Box.
After a very busy year, I had a lovely summer doing lots of reading (mostly novels!), swimming, walking and gardening. Doing different things gave me lots of energy ready to start the new year.
Three special things turned up in my mail boxes to surprise and delight me!
Daniel and Gemma sent me a hand-painted poetry stone. Thank you!
An Arrowtown poetry fan sent me a handmade decoration to go on my Christmas tree. Send me an email so I can write back! Thank you!
And I found out Poetry Box won the 2014 Poetry category of The Public Blogger Awards which is based in Los Angeles. My blog was selected from a shortlist of 7 blogs from all round the world. I was very touched to be picked. I danced a wee dance in my study! Wow! Thank you!
This year I am going to be busy writing new books but I will still have some time to run this blog and my adult blog, Poetry Shelf.
This year I aim to:
+ Post Poetry Bonanza Mondays: Post something every Monday morning — some tips, a challenge, interviews, book reviews.
+ Post things in between to surprise you now and then.
+ Post Poem Fridays: Post some of my favourite poems from the challenges on Fridays.
+ Plan a Fourth Fabulous Poetry Competition for Term Two and tell you about it then.
I will answer your letters but I will be busy writing every day until lunch time so I won’t be looking at my emails until after that.
A welcome back challenge – Write a summer poem:
I love poems about the seasons. Summer is almost over! I love summer so I want you to write a summer poem.
Tips:
1. Real detail will make your poem pop!
2. Collect lots of summer words and things before you start. Can you collect more than 30?
(food, places, weather, the sky, things you do, things you wear, things you see and hear, what is in the garden and much much more!)
3. Think about how you will write your poem on the page.
(list poem, shape or picture poem, haiku, couplets, short, long, fat, skinny)
DEADLINE for your Summer-Poem Challenge: Wednesday March 4th
Send to paulajoygreen@gmail.com. Include your name, year, age and name of school. You can include your teacher’s name and email. PLEASE say it’s for the Summer-Poem challenge.
I will post my favourites and have a book prize for a poet (Year 0 to Year 8).
Here are some photos from my summer holidays:
Poetry Box 