Welcome to Poetry Friday Winter '18 Roundup

"He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter." 

-John Burroughs

Summer seems but a distant memory now that January winter winds have blown in and brought snow with below freezing temperatures. A flurry of poems have risen, just in time for the Poetry Friday Winter Roundup. I am delighted to host this event and plan to celebrate and respond to each linkup that will be offered. For those wishing to add their poetic thoughts/blog post, please see the Mr. Linky connection at the bottom of this post.

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Are you ready for a winter challenge? This morning, I sent out an invitation for my newest, seasonal, global gallery of artistic expressions, Winter Wonderland. Poet friends, photographers, artists, students, wonderers, and nature and/or poetry lovers are cordially invited to create alongside me and send their voices throughout social media. Some offerings have already been placed on Twitter at my repository #WinterWonderland18. From the Poetry Friday community of writers, you will find image poems that were posted early by Linda Baie, Ramona Behnke, Leigh Anne Eck, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Jone MacCulloch, Margaret Simon, and Elizabeth Steinglass. I look forward to receiving many more to inspire others to create their own digital perspectives of winter.

A new addition to the gallery will be the creation of a Buncee by those who wish to use the free site. There is an amazing feature to use, animation. I added moving snow to the above image poem but you will need to view it here. Poetry Friday writer, Christie Wyman, was the first to create an animated winter Buncee and I was so intrigued that I designed two, the one above and an animated inspirational poster for elementary children below that. Perhaps, you would like to share it with your students or children and create one too. See the Buncee here.

   

Christie is working with her kinders on winter poetry so their work can be showcased at the gallery. You may want to travel over to Buncee to check out their site and sign up for a tutorial.  

I received a beautiful photo poetry postcard from Mary Lee Hahn with one of her haikus that I am uploading to #WinterWonderland18 and  a one word sticker (below). Michelle Kogan sent me her hand-drawn artistic poetry postcard with an additional poem to honor my one word, hope.

hope rides high in hearts

who welcome her-listen for

her through our new year!
©Michelle Kogan, 2018

Poetry is a gift that keeps on giving. Happy Poetry Friday! I am now going to open the site for those who live on the other side of the world. 

Thanks Mary Lee for the Embrace Hope sticker.

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