Save The Date: Decatur Book Festival Is Coming August 29-31!

 

The 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical | Home

 Many thanks to Dr. JoBeth Allen from the University of Georgia Department of Language and Literacy for the heads up on this WONDERFUL event!  I plan to be there…Billy Collins will be giving the keynote address!  Here is the latest info straight from the festival organizers via email:

It’s hard to believe, but here we are preparing to launch the THIRD annual Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical. The festival has not merely survived its first few years. We’ve built on partnerships with artistic, educational, business, and governmental organizations not only from all over metropolitan Atlanta but from all over the nation. Hosted in the literary haven of Decatur, this festival has quickly joined the ranks of the largest and most talked about book festivals nationwide.
 
 Perhaps we could just keep doing what we’ve been doing and call that good enough, but where’s the fun in that? We’ve added plenty of new and unique programs to this year’s festival:
 
 We’ve had a Children’s Parade since the first year, but this is the first time we’ll be launching a new book at the parade. Not just any book: It’s the first new “Madeline” story in 50 years–”Madeline and the Cats of Rome”–written by John Bemelmans Marciano, the grandson of Ludwig Bemelmans. We encourage everyone to join Marciano in the parade, maybe wear a big yellow hat, sing your favorite French (or, for that matter, Italian) song, or just make some noise.
 
 Though we’ve had programs directed at teenagers from the beginning, 2008 marks the first year we will set aside a space exclusively for teenagers, called Escape. Escape will host best-selling authors for interactive discussions, an open mic and a literary salon. For those under 18, there will also be a quiz show called How Well Do You Know Harry? judged by Cheryl Klein, continuity editor for the last four Harry Potter books.
 
 In a historic partnership, Poets & Writers and Agnes Scott College are working with us to present the best DBF Writers Conferenceyet, with top national editors, agents, critics, publicists, authors, and screenwriters sharing their collective wisdom in a conference tightly integrated with the rest of the book festival. In addition, beginning this year, DBF will host the prestigious Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) awards ceremony. Many of the nominees will give readings at the festival.
 
 In 2006, we hosted the launch event for the first Atlanta Reads. This year, we’ll launch Atlanta Reads as well as the Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Atlanta’s Big Read will encourage the entire community to read and talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
 
 Still not enough to fill your Labor Day weekend? Check out even more of the new programs that make this year’s festival truly unique:

 Brooks & Co. Dancewill perform a dance inspired by Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery,” set to the music of Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” and drawing on Ninjinsky’s seminal choreography to Stravinsky’s work.
 
 In a program called “Words from Iraq,” adult and young actors from PushPush Theater will present multiple perspectives on Iraq through readings of letters children have written to their parents in the military, blogs written by soldiers in Iraq, and a blog by a young Iraqi woman.
 
 In the spirit of the Java Monkey Local Authors Stage, we’re adding a stage for emerging authors just beginning to get their work out into the world, called the Emerging and Exhibiting Authors Stage.
 
 Author and former Olympian runner Jeff Galloway will lead a fun run Saturday morning of the festival, followed by a running clinic.
 
 Lee Smith, Marshall Chapman, Jill McCorkle, and Matraca Berg will all be onstage together to give a taste of their traveling musical–The Good ol’ Girls–about their friendship and the mutual influences of their books and music on one another.
  
 And that’s just the new stuff!
 

You know you can also count on us to bring you the nation’s top authors in our strongest, most diverse line-up yet. You know we’ve got you covered for good food and some of the best singer-songwriters in America. You know we’ll show the whole family a good time. So, come join us this Labor Day weekend for the best AJC Decatur Book Festival yet!    
   
   

 Be sure to check out our 2008 DBF web site,www.decaturbookfestival.com <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=0010o9b8-G1lEKeg0HJ9PdUjGRNyOgyeblVgbcTsEt5PKylDahxzgliuFLJWKLt-zYIoc45cFGTjIsQlOObVGPCdF6Q_S1hyNoiVHSyZMw4GDtx6o-NqZyAj84pBZOFARsm> .

Kelly Bingham Visits The Unquiet Library!

We here at The Unquiet Library had the pleasure of enjoying two whole days of poetry writing workshops with Kelly Bingham, acclaimed author of Shark Girl.  Ms. Bingham worked with 9th and 10th graders both days and helped our students explore simple but effective strategies for writing poetry.  Students were able to participate in hands-on and interactive writing activities to hone their poetry writing techniques.  The workshops focused on the use of imagery, word choice, and description for creating effective and memorable poems.   The workshops were sponsored by The Unquiet Library as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month.

We would like to thank Ms. Bingham for her time and sharing of her writing wisdom with all of us here at CRHS!

 

 

 

How Do I Love Poetry? Let Me Count 30 Ways!

Check out this cool new page from the Academy of American Poets:  30 Ways to Celebrate Poetry!  Here you can browse 30 suggestions for celebrating poetry and making it a part of your daily life.  When you click on the title of a method of celebration, you will open up a separate page with more detailed information and hyperlinks to resources that will enrich your life as a reader! 

Here is a sampling of what you will find:

Read a Book of Poetry
Poet and businessman Wallace Stevens said that poetry is “a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.” This April, let the National Poetry Almanac help you to make poetry one of your own daily necessities.The best point of entry to the world of poetry is, of course, the poem. Dive right into a book of poems–anthologies can be great starting points for browsing and sampling diverse styles and time periods. Other people may find a slim single volume written by just one author more welcoming. Do you remember a poem you liked in school or when you were a child? Seek out poems by the same author. See a poem on your daily commute that got you thinking? First, thank Poetry in Motion, a program of the Poetry Society of America, then track down its source and give the whole book a try. Don’t feel obligated to read the entire book straight through, or to read particularly fast: a line or image from a poem will come back to you when you least expect it. Don’t know where to begin? Start browsing through our Find a Poet and Find a Poem sections and see what strikes you. Check out our Poems for Every Occasion section for mini-anthologies of poems grouped thematically. Listen to recordings of poets people reading their own work in the Poetry Audio Archive. Start looking and we’re sure you’ll find a poem that speaks to you

Poets.org: Create and Store Your Own Digital Poetry Notebook!

from the Academy of American Poets!

 

Poets.org lets users build their own personal portable online “commonplace book” out of the materials on our site. Our “My Notebooks” feature serves as a scrapbook, allowing you to store links to items on the site that you want to keep track of, such as poems, biographies, upcoming events, and audio clips. You can create as many notebooks as you want, with a descriptive name for each–”My favorite poems,” for example, or “Materials for English 101″–and protect them all with one user name and password. Teachers have used the notebooks feature in the classroom, creating assignments around materials found on the website. By adding these materials to a notebook and sharing the user name and password, students can access them more easily.

As you browse through the site, you will see “Add to my Notebook” links on pages with certain types of content–poet bios, poems, audio clips, and events. If you click the “add” link while you’re logged into the site, the item in question will be added to your Notebook. It’s better than bookmarking links in your browser because you can take it with you: log in from any computer to access your saved links. (Please note: our Notebooks are not intended to store original text, except for short descriptions of the contents of each “book”; our server is not nearly large enough to store a million people’s poems.)

To set up a notebook, register today.

More Poetry Celebrations!

If you haven’t walked by the media center lately, take a walk around the perimeter of our library and check out our cool new poetry display!  You will find poems, quotes about poetry, and covers of some of our most awesome poetry books!!!

Once you have checked out our cool display, come on in and check out one of our amazing books of poetry!  Come celebrate National Poetry Month 2008 @ Your Library!

National Poetry Month Celebrations

National Poetry Month Celebrations

Originally uploaded by theunquietlibrarian

Here is a cool mosaic I made using fd’s Flickr Toys at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ . I chose the mosaic option and pulled photos relating to National Poetry Month 2008.

I am proud to say one of our photos, The Unquiet Library, is a member of the “Poem In Your Pocket” photo pool!

The Unquiet Library Celebrates “Poem In Your Pocket Day”!

 

The Unquiet Library celebrated National Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 17!  We created “pockets” of poems throughout our media center where our patrons can go and get a poem to read for fun!  We also gave each English teacher a pocket of poems for his or her classroom to help students celebrate this event of sharing poems.

You can come by the library and get poems for your pockets for the rest of the month!  Please stop by the media center and browse our pockets of poems, which are a terrific mix of classic, modern, and student written poems!  Several of our pocket poems were written by Creekview’s finest! 

Happy poem reading!

 

 

Color Poetry from The Live Poet Society

Do you love poetry?  Then take a look at the collection of Color Poems written by members of Creekview’s very own Live Poet Society!  These color inspired poems explore a variety of themes and use abstract connotations of color to create interesting and memorable images!

If you would like a copy of Mrs. Hamilton’s “Color Poem” framework to create your own color inspired poetry, please drop by the library and see her for a copy of the suggested guidelines. 

 

Color Poems « The Live Poet Society via kwout

 

 

Poem a Day Archives!

Have you been busy and missed the Poem of the Day?  I have been so busy preparing for our poetry reading podcast we did yesterday on April 4 that I have not had time to post the “Poems of the Day” from the Academy of American Poets for April 2, 3, or 4!

Now you can easily access each “Poem of the Day” in one location:  The Poem of the Day Archives!  This year’s selections have been chosen from new poetry books that have been published in 2008, so be sure to check out these cool and fresh contemporary poems!

Poem of the Day, April 5, 2008

Today’s “Poem of the Day” from the Academy of American Poets is “Terzanelle: Manzanar Riot”  by Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan.

To see the copyright friendly full text of this poem, you may visit this link.  Do you like this poem?  You may want to purchase the book Shadow Mountain!  Click here to learn more about this collection of poetry.