Love Letters to Poetry | Pocketful of Poetry: A Mini Chapbook

In celebration of national poetry month, here's a quick and simple mini chapbook project to try on your own or with your students. It can be created by hand or produced digitally. It's a flexible and fun way to create, to experiment with and to share your work. For the purposes of this lesson, the mini chapbook was digitally designed and produced.

While this is a relatively easy book to assemble, it is helpful to consider the following tips:

• Every section is 2-3/4” w x 4’1/4” h. Choose a poem with lines that will work within these sections.

• Accurate folding & good creases can make a big difference--practice creasing the folds with your fingers and going over it again with a burnisher (a tool used in bookmaking) or the blunt side of a pencil or spoon for very crisp folds.

• Remember that nothing is printable beyond the margins on the copy machine or inkjet printer. Plan for a minimum of 1/2" margin along the edges where nothing can be printed. With digital printers the margin may be bigger (as it was with my canon printer).

• Choose background art that is light enough to show your printed poem(s). Do some test prints.

The videos below show how to make the template (part 1) and give an example on how final digitally made mini-chapbook can look and be shared (part 2).

An aside: In part 2, there's a reading of a poem titled “Lemon Moon” featuring hay(na)ku--a new poetic form written in tercets. It was invented by poet, Eileen Tabios, who was inspired by Japanese haiku. Ms. Tabios discusses the form on her site originally calling it Pinoy (Filipino) Haiku as it was introduced on June 12, Philippine Independence Day (from Spain). Writer Vince Gotera, is credited with coining the name hay(na)ku which loosely translates as "Oh!" or "iMadre mia!" in the Philippines denoting an element of surprise. “Lemon Moon” is a chained hay(na)ku which is a collaborative piece that alternates between original and reverse tercets. This site offers a good overview of the hay(na)ku form and how to start writing the simple yet multi-layered form.

DiverseVerse celebrates poetry and verse novels for young people year round. We hope that you and/or your students enjoy making mini chapbooks for your poems. Please feel free to share them on social media and tag us at #diverseverse. Happy writing!