Welcome to Verselove—a space for educators to nurture their writing lives and celebrate poetry in the community. Each day in April, we come together to explore the power of poetry for both heart and mind. Write with care, for yourself and your readers. When responding, reflect back the beauty you find—lines that linger, ideas that inspire. Enjoy.
Our Host
Bryan Ripley Crandall lives in Stratford, Connecticut, where he directs the Connecticut Writing Project and is Professor of English Education at Fairfield University. He gained his teaching legs at the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville, Kentucky, a K-12 public school with a mission for diversity, inclusivity, and equity, and is a proud teacher-leader inspired by LWP XXI. He co-hosts National Writing Project’s The Write Time.
Inspiration: HOME/HOGAR
My childhood home has been an epicenter while moving from here to there and bopping around the globe (always singing Cat Steven’s On the Road to Find Out, of course). I travel often to my childhood home in Clay, New York, where I now care for my parents when I can and love to spend time with an ever-expanding, and always-changing, family.
CWP loves to use children’s and YA texts for inspiring writers. With our immigrant- and refugee-background composers, we’ve had tremendous success with verse novels (e.g., Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate and Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga). This past summer, though, we used Matt de la Peña and Loren Long’s children’s book HOME, their follow-up to the award-winning collaboration, Love.
Home is not the walls we build up
around our orderly little lives
but the wild, wild world outside.
It’s the hawk steadily circling overhead,
measuring the sky with its wings.
And it’s the road of the tide
retreating over rocks.
It’s the floppy flight of a monarch butterfly
and the sweet smell of sunlight shining down
on a field of jasmine.
Home, for me, reminds me where my heart is (and has been). It is true, too, that languages we speak decorate exactly who we are (it is why we loved reading Hogar with students, too – celebrate translanguaging!!!).
Hogar no son las paredes que construimos
alrededor de nuestras pequeñas vidas ordenadas,
Sino el indómito mundo de allá afuera.
Process
Think about your childhood, teenhood, adulthood, personhood, and all the locations you’ve seen as a home. How have such spaces harbored your soul and/or catapulted you to seek safer, better locations? How do you define home in your current state of being?
Directions: Brainstorm words you associate with the locations you’ve felt safest…the places that have brought you many emotions. Explore images, memories, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings you associate with these locations. Feel free to be multilingual, too..
Humming
~b.r.crandall
At first it was childhood,
Utica greens & chicken riggies,
the songs of an empty refrigerator box
becoming a castle radiant enough for my sister Queens…
…the time for learning puppy breath on cold, linoleum floors
and finding warmth while wrapped in towels after a day of swimming —
(she waved willow branches to swat porch flies as he stars bathed in the lake).
I see the sun and the sun sees me.
Я бачу сонце, і сонце бачить мене.
We buzzed along mental maps of Cherry Heights,
peddling ten-speeds in high tops,
feathering hair with wiffleballs & pig skins,
while telling truths and daring one another
With Milwaukee’s Best stolen from our fathers.
This is before I found silence as a lonely Londoner –
way before the Danish winds,
taught me to sip Tuborgs in a skurvogn,
smukke solnedgange langs fjorden,
& to maneuver my mouth like a magpie:
Pen Oos, Vahgeena,
Ah Noos, & Svinek Ter
Walking along Beargrass Creek
I’d also learn to fiddle with Kentucky bluegrass,
all the stories of room 301,
Tommy Tuesdays, David Dursdays – the miracle of Brown.
And would one day get used to hiss-snakes
in the wood piles that humored my doctoral studies,
(needing that sanctuary of an Amalfi-drive pool).
These days, I find the simplicity of a blanket matters most,
the times when light teases the dog curled besides me,
the hymnals she sings through whimpers…
And I’ll always find myself humming
of being harbored…to finally have a home…
…even as the monsters set out to destroy them.
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.
The Map to Home
is not the straight line of a major highway
it’s winding back
roads that take sharp turns near land we used to farm
where I’d drive a tractor from sunup
dreaming of an unknowable future
fields where family gathered bringing meals
to dad
the road hits a straight stretch near the old
high school–twice as big now
where band was a class, a subject, and
a family
The map has been folded and re-folded
there are parts I don’t want to remember
and many I can’t forget all folded together
roadside markers highlight
loss and celebration
There are detours and road closed signs,
but they can’t bypass
the feeling of being loved
or prepare us for what lies ahead
I Am From
I am from big ears, bushy eyebrows, and snow white hair
I am from old country names- Lyman and Norcie, Pluma, Easter, Loray, and Verrena
I am from My Old Kentucky Home and Back Home Again in Indiana
I am from beans and ketchup, and cornbread in an iron skillet, and White Castles brought home by the dozens by my dad
I am from Sunbeams, Sunday School, and VBS, from memorizing verses by heart until they became my heart, from growing up to marry a preacher
I am from the USA… Japan, Panama, and Peru have pieces of my heart, too
I am from being a wife, foster and adoptive mom… a widow
I am from being a teacher… inner city schools and ELLs
I am from home in many places, the people in my heart my true home
Wow!! Such an amazing journey- I would love to have coffee and hear all the wonderful stories you have hidden…. Thanks for sharing
Thank you, Bryan. I appreciate the prompt today although I must admit to moments of sadness as I wrote. I lost my father a month ago so I thought about the town where he grew up and I spent summers with my Granny.
Home is the road
that circles back through memory
the porch that never quite lets go,
the stories, the songs, the cicadas,
that hum long after voices fade
on that porch, after your loss, watching
as peas slipped cool through my fingers,
tilt-run-turn-sort-sift,
the rhythm of staying
in a place already leaving
Main Street still begins
just past the narrow bridge,
though no one is sure anymore
where it really starts
at Maiden’s Well,
or at the memory of it
The town is not dying,
not exactly…
it is softening, scattering, dissolving,
like voices drifting from a back porch
into honeysuckle dusk
Grandpa sleeps with his hat tipped low,
dogs pooled at his feet like shadows,
and somewhere a screen door
swings drunkenly on its hinges,
remembering hands that once pushed through
now home is a road I can still name
but no longer fully walk,
a place where the flowers almost cover
the river rock path
but never quite hide it
and I find myself humming
being harbored,
being held and holding
even as the houses empty,
even as the stories loosen,
even as the porch light stays on
for no one
and everyone
at once
Melanie, I just love how this begins, as a road circling back through memory. It’s soft, meandering, mesmerizing, much like a journey should be. So much of your language is that (tilt-run-turn-sort-sift, the honeysuckle dust – gorgeous! – dogs pooling like shadows, humming, harboring, held, holding – all those h’s breathing words out). At that ending – oh, how it lands.
Thanks, Bryan, for your facility with a long line, with detail- and image-rich sentences, with stanzas that a varied, delightful, and surprising. And thank you for keeping the non-English languages non-italicized — a poet should never other their mother tongue.
As always, I post what I write here. Here’s today’s offering, the form inspired by this one.
“Be it ever so humble”
My father-in-law said,
“Find the cheapest house in
the nicest neighborhood.
Then move in.”
That was decades ago
& three lovely children,
interest & escrow,
save, pay, & then
emergencies, hail storms,
sprinkler systems, mouse traps,
suburban plagues in forms
that make you laugh
in their perverse surprise.
But it isn’t all bad.
Fresh paint brightens the eyes.
My wife was glad
to circumcise the house
(her words, not mine). A wall
opened to allow
more light. We all
took pride in the barn doors.
Everyone roasted me.
I should have known better.
Michelle could see
a way to beautify
our home. But then again,
she knows loving this guy
means that again
& again, she must wait out
my … my … What to call it?
My contentment with now,
my calm habit
of saying “This is fine.”
[Insert flaming dog meme]
Father-in-law of mine,
through her, I see
the advice you lived but
didn’t say: Find the house.
And trust my girl about
its kids, its use.
Good Morning, Bryan! I am so-so grateful for you and your poem today. I think This was for me: “I see the sun and the sun sees me. / Я бачу сонце, і сонце бачить мене.” I teared up reading it and appreciate it more than I can express. Here is my poem for today:
Home Is Where It Learned to Be
Now, home is where my loved ones are:
in Louisiana with my life partner,
in England with my oldest daughter,
in Ohio with the family of my youngest,
and still in my beloved Crimea—
with siblings, nieces and nephews,
and my parents’ resting places.
Home is where Crimean Mountains
kiss the radiant rising sun,
where the Black Sea hugs the day
and tucks it in for the night.
It is where Mom and Dad
are still there with us,
each busy, but present,
ready to support, scold,
teach, listen, hear.
It is where ten of us
at the round dinner table
share freshly baked
khatmer bide—flaky,
soft bread—with Mom’s
famous cherry jam.
It’s where we make up games,
invent the rules,
and play outside till dark
until the sound of Mom’s call.
It’s where people meeting you,
Say, “Dobrogo Ranku!
Buvaite Zdorovi.”—
Good Morning!
Wishing you health.”
It’s where I go to bed
knowing Mom and Dad
would take care of everything,
would find a way out
of the life’s toughest corners.
And now I carry that knowing with me,
wherever home has learned to be.
Leilya, here’s where I am landing (and want to stay) – “where Crimean Mountains kiss the radiant rising sun, where the Black Sea hugs the day and tucks it in for the night” – the imagery and actions are vivid and comforting. And also in the “knowing Mom and Dad would take care of everything” – we certainly owe parents so much for the care and safety they give. That knowing that is carried into every home we make is the thread of our survival and nurturing.
Hi Bry! Home wasn’t the issue. It was what to wear, eat and drink. I had fun with this one.
DISCOMBOBULATION!
In another state, working in a new region
Learning terms for familiar things
Hoping soon to get my wings.
How do I talk to the teens?
They don’t know what I mean.
At home in Motown, we called it pop
In St. Louis, it was coke whatever the flavor
They called it soda in Massachusetts and Maine
What to order when on a transcontinental train?
Hoagie, hero, po boy or wedge
Names for the sub sandwiches we called at home
Not knowing the regional terminology
One could starve on the roam.
What shoes should I wear today?
I wanna be quiet and comfortable.
“What chu you wearin’?” What do I say?
Sneakers, kicks, gym shoes or tennies or beaters?
On the roam in the new state near another new home.
But it was grinders that threw me for a loop!
Why would high school musicians be selling “grinders” in the summer?
That’s what burgers are called in Massachusetts!
Talking with teens that year was really a bummer!
Daily discombobulation!
Anna, I love that you explore home in terms of language variations. This is what I discuss with my students in linguistics course, and I also ask them about the name for a cold carbonated drink. Even in Louisiana, some say soda, some coke, and some pop, or just a drink. The names for sports shoes have less variations, so I haven’t heard kicks and beaters before. “But it was grinders that threw me for a loop!” – this would threw me off too. Thank you for such a fun poem!
Anna, what a great title for your exploration today (DiscomPOPulation ran through my head with that first verse). I intro jargon with a study of what we call different things in different places – the kids are fascinated. There’s a couple of small sections (like city size) that have their own words). It’s amazing how language travels and transforms – as you share with us from your travel.
Thanks, Bryan for these mentor texts and for the invitation to think about home, which has been on my mind a lot.
Hogar
Hogar is the aisle in Walmart
where we bought a knife
for our Mazatlán apartment,
the word we gave the Uber driver
so he knew where to find us
hogar is not a house
a house is thirteen bodies
one bathroom
black mold blooming in corners
pink bacteria climbing the shower curtain
a house is where others now
chop vegetables with the knife we left behind
learn the rhythm of autumn mice
how not to light a fire
that is a house
hogar is a way of being
not the drip of a hot shower
with the circuit breaker within reach
not four layers of blankets
in a Cusco bed
not the microwave unplugged
so the oven can live
but maybe, yes definitely
home is the table
where we sit
and imagine our lives after
celebrate our lives before
the coffee between us
instant
pour over
machinato
I like a place to sit
with my love
and that feels like home
even if
it moves
Beautiful. We’ve had other prompts for ‘home’ in the past, but a student’s work on translanguaging has me rethinking the way I understand them. I was also thinking about you and the ways you’ve found home in your own creations, reflections, stories…And I love how you approached this…pushing against the structures in which we find ourselves inhabiting and reaching for the feeling (even if it moves) with those we love.
Phew. The tip-tapping rhythm was heard. For so many, finding home takes time…leaves scars. Teachers learn this quickly about their students and many worked hard to find their own.
Oh, Sarah, your poem is so moving, and I think we have the same idea of home, which is quite different from a house. I think you also learned to find home where it finds you–at Walmart, at the table, at the place to sit with your love, wherever that place might be. Thank you!
Oh, Sarah. So many lines to love here. I am not sure where to start–I read this outline and the softness of the last lines grabbed me. “I like a place to sit with my love even if it moves.” Sigh. Lovely. The lines about buying the knife and leaving the knife also grabbed me but for different reasons–they felt like you were making a memory and leaving a mark that you were there or leaving a tool for someone else to make a memory with. While I don’t drink coffee (unless the taste of coffee is completely covered up), your description of making it here sounded so lovely and like such a beautiful ritual.
Bryan, Thanks for taking us down Memory Lane to a childhood of humming. I was singing a song in the car the other day and my granddaughter, much like my daughter her mother, said, “Stop singing that song!” I kept singing. I want to be known for my singing.
My Mother Sang Opera
Every dish she washed,
a prop.
Every floor she mopped,
a stage.
I carry her song with me everywhere.
I sing it in my head, buzzing
from the top of my silent lungs.
”I want to be someone who makes music with my coming.”*
Keep singing. Keep singing. Keep singing. The other day I caught myself flowing air into a fist while wiggling fingers (as if playing a tuba)…a behavior my dad did while he drove and I was doing it, too (genetic? learned behavior). It’s the music. The first two lines have me performing with your mother…with you, too. And your music will be what your granddaughter remembers most.
Margaret, I hear so many voices in your poem today – yours in the author voice, your mother’s (everywhere), and Nye’s in that brief quote at the end (I can hear the sounds of both her and you speaking). Our poems belong together today – you have showcased what mine attempted to explain.
Gorgeous! I love the vision of your mother singing and you carrying her song with you. My mother and I sang together (very badly) every morning on the way to school.It is a cherished memory. The line “every dish she washed, a prop” just grabbed me. BEAUTIFUL!
Yes, keep singing… one day your granddaughter will be singing and her granddaughter will say stop… and it will continue on, your mother’s legacy…
Bryan, thank you for hosting us today as we think of home – past, present, and future versions of it. Your lines of simplicity will echo in my mind all day –
These days, I find the simplicity of a blanket matters most,
the times when light teases the dog curled besides me,
the hymnals she sings through whimpers…
Yes to the Kentucky Bluegrass and all the places (and languages) you reference, and I love that you used other language in your verse. I seek the simple, and the dog and blanket and hymns in the whimpers are what will stay with me through the day.
My Open Road Retirement Home
a teardrop
a fifth-wheel
a bumper pull
no tent
no yurt
no fort in a tree
a camper van ~
Class A, B, or C
anywhere I can take to the road
most any RV will do for me
but with this old back and
collapsible knees
no tearjerkers for me, please
a full tank of gas
a State Park Pass
dogs by my side, ready to ride
(husband can come along, too)
pens to write and books to read
and that is all I’ll ever need
Your poem sounds like a country western song! “Dogs by me side!”
This line sent a newsflash across my mental scree. I never thought about it before, but a link within/amongst all the homes I’ve occupied have been the pens and books. I’ve always been a reader wanting to know more and a writer trying to make sense of my knowing. I’m sure your husband loves when you take him along. And I have a new word…yurt. Thrilled, because I’ll be able to rhyme it with yogurt in the near future. But, in truth, I’d really like to do a poetic roadtrip in your camper van.
Kim, can I come visit? This sounds idyllic. I’ve a fondness for those teardrop campers, something about the size and shape that reminds me of becoming a Fisher Price person in a playscape. I can’t decide if I want to convert it into a little shopfront and live inside or just park it in the furthest national park and hibernate!
I read true contentment in these lines… and isn’t that where we find home?
Bryan, your poem is a roadmap of life, yet always finding home. I’m drawn to the blanket and curled dog now too, having lived many places as well, as it always feels most like home. Thank you for an inspiring prompt.
Homeward Bound
I carry home with me.
It lives inside my cells,
transferred from mother to child
across placental divides,
bits and pieces of the past
lodged into DNA,
reminders of who we once were
and where we’d once been,
pieces of stardust
and cosmic rays
finding their way
from before time began
and throughout time forward,
binding her story
in one common thread
of home.
Jennifer, the common thread is felt so strongly here the way you weave generations and timelines here, each person having a place in the unfolding of life…..and home….it makes me smile to see the picture of it!
Jennifer, Why is it that our mothers are the ones who make home a home? My mother came to me as well. I love “pieces of stardust.”
Jennifer, for me it’s the “stardust / and cosmic rays” within the DNA that captivates me. I’ve been really thinking about the galaxies that might exist within the dust on the tip of an eyelash concept and how, with all our zest for individuality and originality, we truly are DNA carrying forth survival mode within the tribe we arrive…a species nature to pass on narratives (we tell ourselves) one generation after another. And this brings me to womanhood…the miracle of carrying another and offering one’s home. It’s truly remarkable. I love how you interpreted and used today’s prompt.
Throughout time forward… one common thread. I hold the thread from the past and hand it in to the future…
Bryan, thank you! I don’t have a poem draft this morning—but I do have oodles of free write prompted by your motivation to connect with the ideas of home. I can imagine sister queens very well…and the lonliness of being a foreigner in a city. There’s a richness in the memories that come from this.
Thanks for the cool prompt!!! Such a great experience to be around so much talent!!
Where I Be.
I am backwoods, uptown, no-good, hillbilly,
College educated, reformed, serious-not really,
Dignified countrified wanna -be ganster,
Storytelling, crybaby –history teaching prankster.
I’m from dirt roads and city lights,
I Work early and party nights.
Bass fishing, rabbit hunting,
Turkey calling, deer grunting,
Trail hiking, mountain climbing,
Bike riding, abstract rhyming,
b- ball- Gym rat, football fan,
Grass cutting, weedeating,pine-straw man.
Chop wood for fun,
sell it too,
I’ll take the grilled, not the bar-b-que.
I’m from the briar patches and the mountain top,
My favorite artists are Everlast, Chevelle, and Tupac.
I’ll float the Flint and jump off the bridge,
Flip off the rock and climb the ridge!
Ride my bike through every alley in town,
Skate off curbs and 360 around.
I’ll write a poem then haul some hay,
Work-out, cuss like a sailor, then pray.
write a book, don’t know how to cook,
I Tangled with Iceberg,
well I had a look….
Fine wife, with great kids,
blessed after all the wrongs I did.
I’m the mixture of renegade and Cherokee,
Got lost in dark, but now I see.
Got Baptized in the Flint,
wrote Nals about what it meant.
Connect with red- tails,
and collect squirrel tails.
my life a revolving fairytale,
A heavenly hell,
Served medium well….
Coached every sport they offered me,
Still fighting with my complacency.
Where I’m from, is not my reality,
I long for creativity.
I haven’t designed my destiny,
My road keeps turning in front of me!
Creations of imagination control my sanity,
When it arrives, it will be my finality.
But, Which of the two is it?
I won’t stop, I’ll never quit!
Boxer
I really enjoyed your journey to describe home for you and more about who you are. As someone who grew up in Texas and spent a lot of time in the country, I was nodding along to many of your references. Well done!
Clayton, I loved the rhythm of this – I could feel the words traveling within me as I read. It would make a great slam poem. There are lines here, that catch upon me (like your briar patch) and don’t want to let go, starting with the wording of your title and following through to “I haven’t designed my destiny.”
Clayton, I can play this movie in my head – – especially floating the Flint, jumping off the rock (still scary to me). And I love the honesty in these lines, the varied levels of work and meditation:
I’ll write a poem then haul some hay,
Work-out, cuss like a sailor, then pray.
You capture where we live so well it’s almost a photograph.
Boxer – Your “home,” your tugs left n right share a person that is an inspiration to me. How full and rich and open you are… if you lived in the treehouse next door, the gate would swing open every day and we’d climb and jabber. I’d read your poems out loud and write songs and play my guitar for you… just so you’d write me into your home. Thank you for this glorious poem… for you. Susie
My favorite line came early.
especially as it bounced off hillbilly. I’m fascinated with the 1st-generation arrival to collegiate education (somehow we got there, and somehow it still doesn’t feel right in adult life…like we’re imposters or weren’t meant to be included. Be proud a reformation never occurred and you hung on to the backwoods.
I absolutely love the back-and-forth rhythm of this poem. Such rich description. Beautiful.
To have a family of our own is to be blessed… that’s home.
Memories of Home is always an inspiration, Brian. This river was an important childhood landmark and yet, as the poem notes, we never looked at it the same way again.
Kevin
My mother was in a college class at Quinnipiac
when she asked us to take a handful of glass tubes
to the Mill River to collect water for samples
to see what was in there that we couldn’t see
Curious, we did as she told, and then waited
We skipped stones, and walked across bridges,
and in winter, we teetered on ice barges;
One spring, we saw the largest snapper turtle ever
and ducked down on a summer day as a heron descended
In memory, it took forever for her to know
Then, she warned us to never ever to drink the water
of the river that ran through all of us,
and we never looked at the flowing currents
the same way, ever again — only the factories
Kevin, your poem makes me wonder how long it will be before we are warned to never ever drink the waters of anywhere that run through all of us. The difference between the innocence of childhood exploration and freedom and the realities of the knowing that comes as we grow up is stark here. A true garden of eden.
Kevin, I love how your poem sets up the ending. But in the middle, you take us as children to the river. I had a creek and now a bayou. But I never drank from either. Thanks for this poem that inspired my own memory.
Phew. Kevin…I’m a kid of similar creeks and waterways (remembering the adventures, until the toxicity arrived). What an amazing narrative quality in these lines…from mom taking course at the Q to boys skipping rocks. The innocence and playfulness popped…the generational wake-up call continuing today. There are many outlets for such a poem, beyond our #VerseLove community. Phew.