What I managed to do despite a crazy busy November

In which I share this year's Christmas card design and a few poems from November poem-a-day

Hi friends,

It’s December 2nd, which means the Holidays are in full swing. Every year I like to make handmade Christmas cards to send to friends and family. Every year I “plan” to have the cards done (or at least started) before Thanksgiving. And nearly every year I’m rushing to get them finished by the middle of December.

This year’s a bit different. This year I used the momentum of my stamp carving phase to design a card made from eight little hand-carved stamps. I finished carving the stamps on Saturday and stamped my first eight cards last night! I’m ahead of schedule! Or at least it feels like it since we’re not halfway through the month yet.

Here’s one of the cards I made:

This is one design of many, since I can change the arrangement and colors of the stamps at my whim to create different variations. Each individual stamp is about 1 x 1 1/2 inches.

I wanted to do something fun and festive this year, and I think I succeeded. What do you think?

Do you sends out cards during the Holidays?

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November Poem a Day Poems

During November I decided to participate in a “poem a day” challenge. On Facebook there’s a group called The Poetry Pub that shares prompts for each day in November. And Writer’s Digests hosts a poem a day chapbook challenge. So, this year I decided to try to write one poem based on both prompts each day in November. I missed a few days, but by the end of November I had 26 new poems (or partial poems). Not bad for a super busy month! I shared the poem from day 1 in my last newsletter. Here are a few more:

Day 3 - Poetry Pub Prompt: Homebody 
Writer's Digest Prompt: Correspondence

I got your letter today. 
I opened it 
and read it
but not before I imagined the journey it took
to get from you to me
all the way across the sea 
and through mountain passes
and meandering forest roads 
and plains that look like oceans of grass. 
Then a final zig-zag through the city
to a little box on the street,
there to greet me. 

I imagine myself within its folds,
an adventurer traveling the city
the country 
the world.
Maybe some day, I think. 

But you know me better than that. 
Which is why you send me these letters. 

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Day 5 - Poetry Pub Prompt: Landscape
Writer's Digest Prompt: Love

There is a tower at the state park 
where park-goers can climb
up up up above the trees. 

It’s what we have instead of
a mountain peak 
peeking into the clouds. 

I stand here with you 
feeling the tower flex in the breeze 
and the breaths heaving in your chest 

because, as if you were twenty five again,
you had to time your hurried ascent 
up up up those metal stairs. 

From here the tree tops sway and shimmer
and the river is a satin ribbon
gracing the flowing, folding hills.  

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Day 15 - Poetry Pub Form Friday: Golden Shovel
Writer's Digest: Nameless, faceless 

Note: In a golden shovel poem, the writer takes a line from another poem, and each word from that line becomes an end word for each line in a new poem.

From The Crocodile’s Toothache by Shel Silverstein 

I have never visited the
far away place where man wrestles crocodile
but once I went
far far from home to
see castle ruins, jagged on the 
hill like teeth that have never seen a dentist. 
My brothers and 
sisters and I explored, ran, sat,
among bits of crumbling wall that fell down
long long ago, now frozen in
time, preserved for the
people not content to view the world from a chair

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Day 22 - Poetry Pub Form Friday: Sonnet
Writer's Digest Prompt: Machine

It was fun combining these two prompts! Enjoy this sonnet about my washing machine.

I love to let you do the work for me
whenever laundry towers in a heap
and I can fill a basket happily
to haul it down the stairs to where you sleep,
dormant, waiting for the work to start. 
I wake you with a turning of a knob
and watch as water fills your hollow heart
so you can do the most unpleasant job
of washing, scrubbing all the filth away
while my two hands stay dry and smooth and clean. 
What a joy that you are here to stay 
to keep my socks and underwear pristine!
I don’t know what I’d do without you here. 
Please don’t quit until at least next year. 

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Some great children’s poetry books:

• Poetry Comics by Grant Snider

• I’m Just No Good at Rhyming by Chris Harris

• Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Mark Hearld

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One more thing!

Today (Cyber Monday) is the last day to get 40% off my middle grade novel in verse Mari in the Margins and other great Bandersnatch Books titles. If you’ve been considering purchasing a copy for yourself or a young reader in your life, now is a great time!

On Writing Mari in the Margins

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