Author: Danna Smith

Travel Haiku: Lake Davis, CA

| Danna Smith

Haiku is about paying attention to a moment in nature and capturing that moment, like a snapshot, on paper with words (before it disappears). 

My husband and I recently took the jeep up to Lake Davis near Portola, CA in northern California to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Rather than keep a written journal or take a ton of pictures, I like to poetically record what I see in my travels. I’m sharing some of my travel haiku here today. Some attempts are better than others but hopefully, you can “see” what I saw through the imagery in these poems.

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I Am Offering This Poem To You: A Golden Shovel Poem (with template)

| Danna Smith

Golden Shovel poetry is a poetic form in which you borrow a line, or lines, from someone else’s poem, and use each of their words as the end words in your poem. Preferably, you write your poem in a way that feels like a continuation or a companion of the original. Personally, I struggle with this form. It’s challenging but I love that we get to celebrate and honor our favorite poets and their poems in this way.

Below you will find my poem and a template I designed to guide you when writing your Golden Shovel. Click here to learn more about the form.

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This and That (Spring)

| Danna Smith

One fall I went walking with a friend on a nearby trail, the colorful leaves crunching beneath our sneakers. We were talking about the russet beauty all around us, pointing out this and that as we went along. I thought a poem, in the form of “This and That” would be a fun challenge and it played on my mind as we walked. So, I went home and wrote this fall poem. And then I wrote a winter This and That. Now, spring has sprung and so has a new poem in this fun form!

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Fun with Junk EMail: A List Poem

| Danna Smith

My computer recently crashed and when it was up and running again, I found all of my junk mail had bailed the confines of its folder and was hanging out in my actual inbox. I spent hours sifting through what was junk and what was not junk. But as they say, when life gives you lemons, write a poem. That’s what they say, right? Anyway, I seized the opportunity and wrote a list poem made up entirely of the subject lines of my spam mail. It took some time to find subject lines I could rhyme but it turned out to be a fun poetry project!

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Blog Hop: Happy International Haiku Day!

| Danna Smith

Occasionally here on Poetry Pop, you’ll see a Poetry Pop Blog Hop post. This is when we take a field trip and hop over to another blog to see what’s going on. Today we are hopping over to CELEBRATE PICURE BOOKS blog where we are celebrating International Haiku Day and my newly released board book, Peek-A-Boo Haiku. Please come join us!

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Celebrate National Poetry Month with “H Is For Haiku” (with lesson plan)

| Danna Smith

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to H is For Haiku, a beautiful book on Haiku written by the late Sydell Rosenberg (1929-1996) published by Penny Candy Books. Syd was a charter member of the Haiku Society of America in 1968. She wrote and published her work over a literary career spanning roughly three decades. On this, the first day of National Poetry Month, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate! (And for dessert, we’ll be enjoying a mother-daughter haiku collaboration in a special book below by Syd and her daughter, Amy Losak.

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Memorial Haiku: Happy Birthday, Dad

| Danna Smith

Today would have been my dad’s 85th birthday. He was a lifelong falconer, so it seemed fitting that a hawk chose the day Dad passed away to circle the sky above me in grand, sweeping loops as it sang to the sky. It felt as if my dad finally had his wings and was saying goodbye. Four years later, I still think of my dad when I see a bird of prey (I’m sure I always will). I wrote this haiku in remembrance of him. Happy Birthday, Dad, from your chickadee.

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