Hi everyone,
I’m pleased to provide the link to this week’s featured guest on Poetry from Daily Life, ELLEN HOPKINS. My thanks to Ellen for provided so much thoughtful and helpful advice on our theme subject. As each week passes, I am enjoying the conversation more and more.
Hi everyone,
Yesterday I learned that the first review of my upcoming book with Holiday House, A Tree is a Community, is a starred review from Kirkus. “Writing in animated free verse that calls urgently to be read aloud…An effervescent appreciation of all that trees do and are.” “And best of all, the poem ends, when spring comes round again, new seeds will drop so that ‘very soon / we will have / a fine new tree. / OH YES!’”
KATE COSGROVE illustrated the book, our third title together, and Kirkus loves her work too. “As small creatures crawl or flit through leafy boughs above in Cosgrove’s bustling, populous illustrations, two brown-skinned children below blow bubbles or peaceably share a rope swing in the cool shade.” Kate is the #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator of A Day With No Words by TIFFANY HAMMOND.
A Tree is a Community will be released on September 17, ten days after Charlesbridge publishes Wild Brunch, illustrated by GILES LAROCHE. Both books are on Amazon and can now be pre-ordered. Come on September!
Hi everyone,
It’s my pleasure to tell you that my guest on Poetry from Daily Life this weekend will be ELLEN HOPKINS, who lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Ellen, a writer for more than thirty years, is a poet, former freelance journalist, and the award-winning author of fourteen NY Times bestselling young adult novels-in-verse, two middle grade novels-in-verse, and four novels (two in verse) for adult readers. She has visited every state in the union.
Poetry from Daily Life is carried in five newspapers in Missouri, Kansas, and South Dakota. It’s hosted by Springfield News-Leader where it appear in print each Saturday and online each Sunday. On Sunday, I post the link that takes you directly to the column. As always, I hope you will enjoy the column and share it with others.
Hi everyone,
The other day someone asked where they could find a copy of my poem, “Missouri,” which I wrote when I became Missouri’s Poet Laureate. It’s in print in the second edition of Bards of Moon City and available at Bookmarx and Waverly House in Springfield as well as on Amazon.
If you would like to hear me read the poem, you can use this link to Tishomingo Arts Council in Mississippi for this year’s Smartphone Recital Series. Click here, https://www.facebook.com/TishCoArts/ , and scroll down a few spots until you get to me. It’s a five-minute recording during which I read “Missouri” and two other poems.
Hi everyone,
My thanks to JOHN SELLARS, Executive Director emeritus of the History Museum on the Square, for interviewing me yesterday on KICK Radio and for KOLR TV. Our talk was live but will be archived by both stations so others can hear it. I’ll give you the links when I get them.
I want to make sure you don’t think I assume that you care every time I give you the link to something I’m in or have done. It isn’t my business if you click on it or not. But since this blog was created expressively for me to tell you about my life as a writer, I’m going to keep posting information and links because that is my business.
Coming up this weekend is Drury University’s 2024 commencement ceremony. This graduating class has the distinction of graduating during the university’s 150-year anniversary and the president asked me to write a poem and read it during the event. Former Senator Roy Blunt is receiving an honorary doctorate and will deliver the commencement address. I look forward to participating in the event on Saturday morning at 11:00. I’ll be wearing my own honorary doctorate regalia so that will be fun. Here I am when I was reading my “Missouri” poem during the 150th year celebration in Stone Chapel.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 