Ants may rule the hill, but they don’t rule here! Art by Landon (Click to Enlarge)
Hello, Great Readers of our series! Just In case you haven’t visited before, let me tell you a little about A Great Nephew and A Great Aunt. My great nephew, Landon (a sixth-grader) and I (his great aunt) collaborate. I write a poem which he illustrates. We started this collaboration in the fall of 2014 and have had so much fun with it that we decided to invite others along. Landon and I will continue to have a new episode on the second Friday of each month. The other Fridays are filling up quickly with guests.
I have created a page on my website to view all the episodes of A Great Nephew and a Great Aunt. Click HERE to visit the page and enjoy past episodes.
Today it is my pleasure to share two creative collaborations . . .
Matt Forrest Esenwine With His Daughter and Then With His Son
Yes! We’re lucky enough to have two collaborations. Both kid drew pictures and Matt wrote two poems. So twice the fun!
First up is Matt’s collaboration with his 2 year-old daughter.
From Matt: My daughter drew this when she was just 3 months past her second birthday. She’s very specific when she draws – rather than scribble large lines all over a page, she makes very deliberate marks and is always concentrating on what she’s doing. When she completed this picture, I asked her what the circles on the left were; she said they were rocks. I asked her what the large, vertical lines in the center were and she said it was a hand. Thinking this may have been simply a 2-year-old responding with some random answer, I asked her again, 5 days later. “What are those circles in the corner?” “Rocks,” she said. “And these lines here in the middle? What are they?” “That’s a hand.” Well now, I guess she knew what she was drawing!
The Picture
Matt’s Poem
The Picture
Matt’s Poem
Many thanks to Matt and his kids for sharing their talents with us. This collaboration was a double delight!
Meet Matt: A voiceover artist and commercial copy writer, Matt Forrest Esenwine has had several adult poems published in various independent collections around the country, including the Tall Grass Writers Guild’sSeasons of Change, Trigger Warning: Poetry Saved My Life, and The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, among others. In 2012 his poem, “Apple-Stealing,” was nominated by the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) for a Pushcart Prize.
Matt’s children’s poetry can be found in Lee Bennett Hopkins’ anthology, Lullaby and Kisses Sweet(Abrams Appleseed, 2015), J. Patrick Lewis’ The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2015), and “Highlights for Kids” magazine, among others. Matt lives in New Hampshire and is currently working on several children’s book manuscripts.
You can find Matt in all of these places.
www.MattForrest.com
www.MattForrest.Wordpress.com (blog)
www.Facebook.com/MattForrestVoice
www.Twitter.com/MattForrestVW
http://Soundcloud.com/MattForrestVoiceWorks (demos/samples)
Thanks to Catherine for hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup at Reading to the Core. If you’d like to know more about Poetry Friday, click HERE for an explanation by Renee LaTulippe.
