Writing Before Writing?

 As all of us begin our school years shortly we know we will be modeling writing with students  each day. Can we squeeze in any writing ourselves before our time is consumed with learning names, organizing a classroom, attending meetings, and preparing lesson plans? Make it a routine to carve out some time during these last days of August and bring out those writing prompts you wanted to finish, or that poem you started at the retreat, or a memoir piece you wanted to write about your grandmother. It will remind you of that process before you introduce it again to students. It will also create a writing routine which is always so important as we try to keep writing. Just ten minutes.... begin!

Slow Days of Summer

"This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders." ~Sarah Orne Jewett
passed on by my sister Carol... thanks.

As the slow days of summer come to a close, it is time to gear up for another year of teaching and learning with our students. One purpose of this blog is to keep you abreast on the activities of NIWP. Another purpose is to provide a list of sites that may help you with your teaching and learning. In the summer institute one focus was on digital storytelling.If you are interested in trying this format, check the links on the sidebar.  Sign up and follow this blog so you can keep up with the posts. Also,please let me know if you would like to do a guest post on this blog.
Christy Woolum

Yard Sale by Robert Farnsworth

Yard Sale

Gold-plate goblets freckled

with tarnish, disconsolate

pajamas, infant shoes, curling

irons, somebody’s ancient

block flute, a candlestick grove,

bakelite coasters, egg poachers,

7 rubber sandals. Scruffy dolls

and accessories, board games

from whose battered boxes

children still look up with glee.

Two bald lamps, a basketball

and dumbbells, a toaster’s chrome

full of early leaves, and tilted

like a grimy satellite inside

a crate, a two-stroke engine.

Now at last admitted to my

neighbor’s back lawn, which

I’ve longed to cut across for years.

I see a tuft of grass and violets,

violets, growing, up in that

elm’s clavicle, a little island

world in the air, where the trunk

divides. I wouldn’t know how

to tell her of the delight I find

in this. But I think I’ll buy that

small stack of teaspoons, just

so I can linger, picking up this

language, whose every word has

finally toppled over in one case

or tense or mood.  Everything as is.

- Robert Farnsworth

I love once again the way the author takes simple things and weaves them into poetry.

Calling All Writers!

Here is a link to the Facebook page of a new online literary magazine in the Pacific Northwest. The site itself is still under construction.
Plasma: Pacific Northwest Journal of Art and Letters