How to Read a Poem Aloud (Revised) and 2 Giveaway Reminders

Hi Everyone,
This month, we've been having a great time celebrating our BlogiVERSEary by sharing audio and video clips of the TeachingAuthors reciting some of our favorite poems. If you missed any of them, here are the links one more time, in the order posted:

• April reading Janet Wong's "Liberty," from Declaration of Interdependence: Poems for an Election Year.
• Carmela (me!) reading our own April Halprin Wayland's "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which was originally published  in the 2009 edition of Greg Pincus's 30 Poets/30 Days project. (See below for a revised version of this great poem!)
• Video-recording of JoAnn, April, and Jill reciting a poem in rounds: Mary Ann Hoberman's "Counting-Out Rhyme" from The Llama Who Had No Pajama. If you've never heard a poem read in rounds, you definitely want to watch this!
• Esther reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s "My Shadow," from A Children's Garden of Verses.
• Laura reading Rudyard Kipling's "Seal Lullaby."

Our actual blogiversary is tomorrow, April 22. Believe it or not, we've been posting for FIVE years!

Our blogiversary giveaway runs through Wednesday, April 23, so if you haven't entered yet, be sure to do so on this blog post. And while our blogiversary celebration is coming to a close, the Poetry Month fun continues with JoAnn's weekly poetry-themed Wednesday Writing Workouts. JoAnn is also giving away copies of her terrific book, Write a Poem Step by Step on her blog.

Before publishing my last blog post, I double-checked with April regarding the formatting of her poem "How to Read a Poem Aloud," which I was sharing in my post. I was surprised to learn that she'd revised the poem since its first publication. Unfortunately, the news came after I'd already uploaded my recording of the original poem to SoundCloud and I didn't have time to re-record it before the post went live. I realized later that today's post was a great opportunity to share that revised version with you. I uploaded a new recording (email subscribers can listen to it here) and I copied the latest version of the poem below. If you want to compare the two, you can go back to my last post.

I'm hoping April will share with us her revision process, because, to be honest, I loved the poem the way it was. Of course, I like this version, too. J

                 How to Read a Poem Aloud (Revised Version)
                    by April Halprin Wayland

            To begin,
            tell the poet’s name 
            and the title 
            to your friend.

            Savor every word—
            let 
                each 
                        line 
                              shine.

          Then—
          read it one more time.

          Now, take a breath—
          and sigh.

          Then think about the poet,
          at her desk,
          late at night,
          picking up her pen to write—

          and why.

                             © April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. 

Happy writing!
Carmela