Welcome to Found Poetry Fridays, a series of prompts and practices to guide you towards the poetry waiting to be found in your world.
Words fail to describe the spirit of my 8-year-old niece. She is a force of nature with a dimpled smile. She is a sweet commotion housed in a body. She has been, since the moment I met her, a distinct and immutable human being. And even more than the average second grader, she is untiring and high energy. Her 19-year-old cousin recently had to take a nap after spending a few hours with her. The poem shared below is a golden shovel I wrote while trying to capture her effervescence. (If you’re reading on mobile, turning your phone to read landscape will fix the funky formatting.)
“I love you, I’m glad I exist” -The Orange, Wendy Cope Little M Tonight, you were so sticky from head to toe I think my heart is rainbow sprinkles now too, love. You are shaken can of soda fizzed to the brim, you are a cherry red popsicle scream and I’m always here waiting for your dimple to spark a glad feeling in all our bellies. I hope you crackle like a pop rock symphony every day you exist.
My sister recently traveled across the country with this daughter. Some of you may have navigated the parental experience of having an excitable child in confined public places, the rest of us can imagine. In the Lyft to the airport my niece was a fountain of opinions and enthusiasm. My sister expected the driver might be irritated. Just as she began to feel the wave of motherhood shame wash over her, she heard the driver say “well, you are such an interesting little person, aren’t you?” Instead of annoyance, he chose curiosity, and he kept up with her chatter until drop-off.
Because I know and love my niece those words touch a deep place in my heart. She is such an interesting little person! It also moves me to reflect on how easily we discount kids when they are their own people with insights, stories and perspective to share. Let’s write some poems for or with them this week.
Practices:
Think of some interesting little people you know. Next time you speak to them, tell them some things you appreciate about them as a person.
Ask a kid you know if they would like to write or create other art with you. It’s of course okay if they say no!
Take some time to journal and reflect on what you’ve learned from kids in your life.
Prompts:
Write a poem for a child you love. Make their unique personality jump off the page. Share it with them even if they don’t “understand” it yet.
Write a poem about some wisdom you learned from a kid.
Joseph Fasano shares poetry prompts for kids on his Twitter and Instagram. Here’s a thread of several - use one to write a poem with a young person, or come up with your own prompt together!
I would love to hear about the brilliant kids you know in the comments. Please share what you’ve learned from them, as well as any poems prompted by this post.
Community Citations:
- is hosting a four-week generative spring workshop called Nourishing. Carson (they/them) is a poet and educator whose work focuses on intersections of transness, spirituality, the natural world, and questions of becoming. There is a drop-in rate for individual workshops, but sign up here by 5 p.m. CST today, March 1, to receive the class packet in time for all four sessions!
On the subject of writing with a younger audience: poet
writes my favorite Substack, and she recently shared on the paid version a thorough lesson plan for people newer to writing. The lesson is on persona poems, and she noted that she has used with high school and undergraduate students.- released a chapbook of astrology poems this week, Sex Is From Mars But I Love You From Venus. You should order it immediately! I did! Get a taste of her stellar astrology poems here.
The prompts from Joseph Fasano are great! At some point I'm going to use them for myself, not just my kids!
I wrote a poem for each of my children, writing about a specific moment with them. I can't tell how I feel about either of these poems at this point. I need a little space from them to come back and evaluate later!
"Dystychiphobia at the Bouncey House"
You asked why I had to go to work,
so I told you about helping worried
people. You recognized in my small speech
fear--two days past, your two hands clutched
a ladder’s top step ten feet in the sky.
You remembered terror, that even if a celebratory
slide is all that's left, the world might collapse
beneath you. Your tall cousin, not tall enough,
ran to retrieve me, and I retrieved you, your wet
eyes panicked but your body inert. Taut.
“They might be scared of being splatted
by volcanoes,” you commiserated
this morning. You know about how the earth
could betray someone, even when they'd done
nothing wrong but to love and seek it out,
glad heartedly.
"The Bird Feeder"
Your dad gone into the deli, we waited
in the car. He'd bring hot rolls with butter
to tide us over on the short drive home
while I held dinner on my thighs. But for now,
the car was still half parked on the low sidewalk,
tilting towards the road, so you must have craned
your neck to ask, “What's that?” of the clear
plastic mounted to a stranger’s second story
window. “A bird feeder,” I told you. Illuminated,
tears fell down your small cheeks, so moved
you were at witnessing the care and feeding
of birds. Northeastern birds are small, taupe-
feathered things, difficult to distinguish
from each other. Reticent and thankless,
as is their right. You caught a stranger
buying seed for birds they mostly wouldn't see.
A testament to goodness in the white colonial
next to the deli and in the backseat of a Kia.