New Kinds of Poetry: Title Poems (2017 Edition)
It’s Poetry Month, my dulcet darlings! That can mean only one thing. Time to come up with a new way of writing poetry.
Today, the challenge is simple. Write original poetry, that makes sense, entirely out of the titles of books published in 2017. For my purposes today I think I’ll work entirely in the picture book medium. That said, I have little doubt that a person could do just as well with middle grade or YA. And if this sounds a bit too close to spine poetry, you are correct. The only difference really is that you can use books that have not been published yet, just so long as they’re coming out in the current year.
Here are mine:
Spring
Deep in the Woods by Christopher Corr
Free As a Cloud by Bai Bing, ill. YU Rong
Walk With Me by Jairo Buitrag, ill. Rafael Yockteng, translated by Elisa Amado
When the Rain Comes by Alma Fullerton, ill. Kim La Fave
Away by Emil Sher, ill. Qin Leng
Now by Antoinette Portis
Shake a Leg, Egg! by Kurt Cyrus
Home and Dry by Sarah L. Smith
And Then Comes Summer by Tom Brenner, ill. Jaime Kim
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A Little Too Insistent
Play With Me! by Michelle Lee
That’s Not How You Do It! by Ariane Hofmann-Maniyar
Quiet! by Kate Alizadeh
Sing, Don’t Cry by Angela Dominguez
Play? by Linda Olafsdottir
This Book
This Book Will Not Be Fun by Cirocco Dunlap, ill. Olivier Tallec
The Book No One Ever Read by Cornelia Funke
The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken
This Book Is Magic by Ashley Evanson
And finally, in book jackets alone:
Love Is
As ever, please check out Travis Jonker’s post on how to make your own spine poetry, as well as his remarkable Book Spine Poem Gallery for fun!
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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Book spine poem is another name for this type of poem.
I mention Travis Jonker’s at the end of the piece. But this isn’t quite spine poetry since some of these spines haven’t been published yet. They also must all be published in the same year.
CHALLENGE!
I think it would be a great idea to have elementary students “write” poems using book jackets. They could even collaborate and create group poems.
Challenge? Not fair! I don’t have access to that many new books these days. I have to work with the thousands of kids books that I’ve collected over the years.
You’ll find examples of book spine poems that I wrote in 2010 using only the titles of poetry books:
http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2010/05/poetry-friday-book-spine-poems.html
I’ve been having a ton of fun creating spine poetry this month. Kelly Jensen (veronikellymars on instagram) had issued a challenge of sorts at the beginning of the month and I’ve been averaging one every day since then (@librarygrl2 on instagram). Here’s one that fits your particular challenge.
What’s in a Name?
I Don’t Know What to Call My Cat by Simon Philip, ill. by Ella Bailey
Pandora by Victoria Turnbull
Frankie by Mary Sullivan
Prince Ribbit by Jonathan Emmett, ill. by Poly Bernatene
Nope! by Drew Sheneman
What’s Your Favorite Favorite? by Bob Shea
Queen Dog by Bridget Heos, ill. by Alejandro O’Keefe
I unabashedly and totally love this.
I’m so glad. That makes me happy. 🙂 These poems are so fun to create I may not stop at the end of the month.