I Dream of Roosters poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Jan at Bookseedstudio for Roundup.

I am yet again away from my desk! But all good things...

How 'bout those awards? I love livestreaming the alayma announcements! BIG congratulations to Carole Boston Weatherford, who received the Children's Literature Legacy Award (formerly the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal or Wilder Award). Carole's body of work is rich and deep, and her work ethic and generous spirit continue to inspire!! Count me proud and happy!

Some of my favorite 2024 books got awards:

One Big Open Sky by Lesa Cline Ransome - CSK Honor & Newbery Honor. I blogged about the book here!

Joyful Song by Lesléa Newman, illus. by Susan Gal - Sydney Taylor Honor

Up, Up, Ever UP! by Anita Yasuda, illus. by Yuko Shimuzu - Caldecott Honor (Yuko's second! Her first was for The Cat Man of Aleppo!) Anita and Yuko both visited the blog a few months back.

24 Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds - CSK Award! This book made my 2024 Favorite YA Book List!

Home by Isabelle Simler- Batchelder Honor (for translations!). I blogged about these beautiful nonfiction poems here.

Wild Dreamers by Margarita Engle - Pura Belpré Honor!

The big winner, The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly, is one I haven't read yet! Which is surprising, because EEK is one of my all-time favorite MG authors. I mean all her books are just so beautiful and moving and inspiring. But isn't that the fabulous thing about books? They'll wait for you as long as you need them to. (Good news: I was requesting titles through my library as the awards were announced, and I've got a digital copy in queue on my e-reader!)

Many of my other favorites were not recognized. And that's okay! I've served on quite a few book awards committees and I have seen behind the curtain...decisions are TOUGH. There are SO MANY WONDERFUL BOOKS in the world...and only a very few slots for award recognition. 

I think of awards as whipped cream or a cherry on top. So so fun and festive and lovely! But not the reason to write. Not even a goal to keep, because one has no control over such things. They're just...extra. And if they happen to your book, great! Have fun with it! And if they don't? Remember a book's purpose isn't to win awards; it's to connect with a reader, to share between author-reader a bit of this experience we call life...let's have fun with that!

I had so much fun with today's ArtSpeak: PICASSO poem! Actually, it was a rough start. The art features a rooster, and I just couldn't think of an original thing to write about a rooster! So I set it aside for a day and decided to DREAM about a rooster instead. That dream brought me to another great red thing: Jupiter! And THEN I had so much fun. :) Thank you so much for reading.

I Dream of Roosters

I dream

I am a great red

space explorer

I discover

the great red

spot on Jupiter

is actually a flock

of Jupiter-roosters

their great red

wings shimmering

against that great red

star we call sun

the roosters are singing

but only I can hear it

their great red

song such a tiny flicker

in that great red

symphony of stars

- Irene Latham

 

Dick & Jane's Parents Go to the Beach

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for a "Brave" Roundup!

In case you want some community learning and inspiration with poets this year, please consider joining us at Highlights Nov. 1-4 for Poetry Palooza! (We're filling up fast...if you are interested, please don't delay!)

I talked last week about how this ArtSpeak: PICASSO series is challenging me. This week's poem went in TWO surprising directions! 

1. The first poem is for kids. Picasso plays a lot with shapes. So I decided to play with shapes, too! (A previous poem I've posted that plays with shapes: "Geometry of Summer")

.

Beach Geometry

Sun draws lines

of heat in the sand.

Sky is rectangle—a blue striped

towel, whipping whipping.

When I unpack my snack

all the kids circle like sharks.

Who let loose that box

of birds to flirt with the surf?

We are a triangle:

my parents              the waves

ME

- Irene Latham

2. This one is for adult readers. Remember Dick & Jane? Here's a great article highlighting the series's ups and downs. 

I don't remember these books playing any part in my reading education, but then I'm a child of the '70s. By then Dr. Seuss and the Weekly Reader series were all the rage. So imagine my surprise when Dick & Jane popped into my brain...and my poem became about their parents!

You'll also see me playing with punctuation in this poem. That's likely because punctuation is on my mind, since I'll be teaching a webinar this spring on Punctuation in Poetry over at Inked Voices. Registration information coming soon!

Dick & Jane's Parents Go to the Beach

they walk bare-
foot in sand

life is a knife
slicing them a/part

wind stitches
them backtogether

- Irene Latham

I do think many of us go to the beach for rejuvenation. And I remember how challenging those busy parenting years were...as much as kids bring a couple together, they can also create great divides. I loved being a mom to young ones, but I'm also happy to be in the season of friendship with our adult children. Thanks so much for reading!

Breakfast Conversation poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tricia at the Miss Rumphius Effect for Roundup.

I'm away from my desk today, but I did want to pop in with the latest poem in my ArtSpeak: PICASSO series! 

One of the reasons I chose Picasso as my 2025 theme was because I wanted to challenge myself. 

I love Impressionism and Post-Impressionism...it would have made so much more sense for me to select Monet or van Gogh! 

But. Just like it makes one a better writer to read AGAINST one's taste, the same may be true for this project. The way to grow is to be willing to be uncomfortable. Since I am not in love with the art, not making instant emotional connections as one does to the art one loves, it's forcing me to look deeper, to see things differently, and to make new and surprising connections.

For this painting, I was thinking about eating meals together in silence. How an onlooker might draw a conclusion that this family has nothing to say to one another. But what if the opposite is true? 

Breakfast Conversation

cling-clang

my spoon

rings the bowl

sip-savor

Mama grips

her coffee-

flavored milk

crackle-hum

Papa reads

while he eats

(but never leaves

a crumb)

yummy-grumble

my tummy sings—

who needs words?

- Irene Latham

Winter Writing Miracle

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit mad-cow-cool-Kat at Kat's Whiskers for Roundup.

Rosie, age 6 (one of my
10,000 muses!)

Today is a Snow Day in Alabama...and in many other places as well. Beautiful! As if predicting this development, I posted a Snow Day poem a few weeks ago. :)

Now that things are getting cranked up again in this new year, I'm feeling energized! The holidays put so much on hold...it's nice to resume some of my usual habits. Today's ArtSpeak: PICASSO is about that very thing. 

It's also partly inspired by this Abraham Lincoln quote, which was one of my father's favorites:

“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

― Abraham Lincoln

In my memory, it was ten THOUSAND angels. How like a poet to make such a change, yes? :) So that's what I put in my poem. And I was also inspired by Molly's post about appreciating her skin, which got me thinking about my continued effort to love and appreciate ALL the cells in my body...ALL parts, not just some of them. Thanks so much for reading!

Miracle

each morning
ten thousand muses
roost

in my skull  

pluck buttons
ribbon       glitter
from even my most
unloveable cells

spill and build
cathedrals across
winter's bare 

pages

- Irene Latham

Introducing 2025 ArtSpeak: PICASSO

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit our organizer/poet extraordinaire Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading for Roundup.

First: be sure to check out the Cybils Poetry Finalists. Congratulations to all...and yay for beautiful poetry books for kids!!

I have a new One Little Word: SISU (see-soo). It's a Finnish word I fell in love with last week. It hard to translate into English, but it includes courage, resilience, and an inner something...

Sisu makes me think about these lines from "Go to the Limits of Your Longing," by Rainer Maria Rilke, trs. by Joanna Macy:

"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final."

Find out more about what sisu is and why I selected it over at Smack Dab in the Middle. 

In related news... it took a long time for me to settle on my 2025 ArtSpeak theme! 

But a couple of days ago, I just knew. 

No, I am not a giant Picasso fan. Some of his (Analytical Cubism) work creeps me out! 

BUT. 

I've never before focused on a single artist. And who better than Picasso, who was such an outlaw-artist and so darn prolific? (According to this article at The Met, he produced more than 20,000 works over his lifetime!)

I love that Picasso was brave. He wasn't a follower. He made art on his own terms. And he kept his creative fire burning for decades. These are traits I aim for in my own creative life!

Check out these Picasso quotes. Here are a couple of quickies:

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."  (He totally could have been talking about poetry!)

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."   (Yes! That pretty much sums up my writing process. :)

"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good sense.'"  (YES) 

So I look forward to getting to know Picasso a bit better this year. I have written poems after a few of his works in previous years. . .

Red Skirt

Hello, Neighborhood!

 I did a series of (16) animal haiku after his line drawings that became a limited-edition chapbook last year! A Little Book of Animal Haiku: Across the Seasons by Irene Latham, illus. by Pablo Picasso (SOLD OUT - but we are considering a second print run in advance of 2025 National Poetry Month!)

Here are a few of the poems featured:

cat haiku

pig haiku

owl haiku

And here is today's poem. (Bet you wouldn't see this image and think "Picasso"!) Thank you so much for reading!

Yellow House, Blue House

Look! A yellow
house that's really
a blue house,
a brokendown house,
a where-did-
they-go? house.

Let's pop by
and say hello!
Fix those doors
and windows!
Let's go slow—
maybe later
we'll add a patio?

Already the house
is a little less blue.
All this time, it sighs,
I was waiting for YOU.

- Irene Latham