Let the Countdown to National Poetry Month Commence!

April is National Poetry Month, or as I call it ’round these parts, National (Book Spine) Poetry Month. I actually do the air parentheses and everything. Last year, inspired by the amazing work of Nina Katchadourian, I tried my hand at creating a book spine cento. Here were the results:

I also encouraged all comers to give it a shot as well, and was amazed by what I saw.

Click here to view the book spine poetry gallery

Let’s kick off National Poetry Month in style. Create your own book spine poem, snap a picture, and send it my way (scopenotes (at) gmail (dot) com) or post it to your blog and let me know. Starting tomorrow, I’ll post one of my book spine centos every Friday for the month of March. On Friday, April 1st, I’ll post a gallery with all of the entries I receive from you.

Here are my tips for creating a book spine cento

1. Check out last year’s book spine poem gallery for inspiration.
2. Get to  a place with plenty of books. A library works nicely. Or a large home collection.
3. Start looking at titles, and see what strikes you. Arrange and rearrange in your head. The best part of this type of poetry is the fact that you don’t know where you’ll end up.
4. Have a pencil and paper with you to write down titles that stand out – you can refer back to them later.
5. Don’t be afraid to use the library catalog to look up titles with specific words or phrases that fit.

Do you want to try book spine poetry with your students during April? I’ll post a second gallery on April 1st exclusively for student poems, and add to it for the entire month.

Click here to view last year’s awesome student book spine poetry gallery

So create your own, send it my way, and see your work in these here pages on April 1st.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

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