Wouldn’t it be fun if you and your friends were actually coming over to see me and talk about poetry?

I would definitely make you cookies and we could have them as a snack when we got exhausted from all of our poetry efforts! Or we could just eat the cookies WHILE we were writing poems and not worry if we got crumbs or smears of warm chocolate on the pages.

This picture is not really my house, but it’s fun to imagine what it might be like inside. Maybe there’s a lovely garden out back where we could sit to chat.

(I chose the words “lovely” and “garden” instead of “pretty” and “yard” because it looks to me like a house that might be in England.)

What do you think?

I have written poetry my whole long-legged life.

But it wasn’t until people believed in me that I started to think of myself as a poet.

I used to use my daughter’s weekly 3rd grade spelling words to create poems for her classroom. One of the mom’s kept the poems and put them into a notebook with my name printed on the outside. That made me feel like she believed in me.

Another friend gave me a beautiful journal to write poems in. I’ll show you the journal my friend gave me and the first poem I wrote inside.

I’m telling you this because I think it’s important for you to have a special place where you keep your poems. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It can be a plain notebook or just several sheets of paper stapled together. Having your own poetry journal will make you feel like the poet you are.

I should also probably mention that I believe in you.