The other day, I was re-reading my all-time favorite book of poetry, Colin West’s fabulous collection, The Big Book of Nonsense. In Chapter 1, there is a poem simply titled “Knitting.” In Chapter 2, there is a poem called “Octopus.” I was still thinking about the knitting poem when I started reading the octopus poem,... Read more »
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Triangles Make Me Feel Nervous
Sometimes I think of the ending of a poem before I know how it’s going to start. An idea for a good ending can come from anywhere, and sometimes it can even come from a poem someone else wrote. That’s the case with this poem. The poet Joshual Seigal recently wrote a poem called “Motor... Read more »
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The Showdown
My friend and colleague Alan Katz , author of the “Silly Dilly” song books such as Take Me Out of the Bathtub, mentioned that going to be doing a performance called “The Joke Show” and he said that it’s called a “show” because you’re expected to “show up.” Since we both write funny poems, I... Read more »
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Ice Pops, Ice Pops
Summer is here, and the days are getting hot! I wrote this poem a couple of years ago for Storyworks 2 magazine, just in time for the end of the school year. Now that July has arrived again and the days are scorching, it felt like the perfect moment to share it on the website,... Read more »
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Bernadette the Burper
Sometimes the silliest ideas make for the funniest poems. This one started with a simple question: What if someone was really, really good at burping? I mean unbelievably good. That idea made me laugh, so I knew I had to run with it. The result is a poem that plays with repetition, exaggeration, and a... Read more »
South Africa