Until a couple of years ago, there was a terrific children’s poetry website called GigglePoetry.com, with hundreds of funny poems from dozens of different kids’ poets. It was created by Meadowbrook Press and featured poems from their many anthologies, including Kids Pick the Funniest Poems, A Bad Case of the Giggles, If Kids Ruled the School, and more.
In 2018, Meadowbrook Press was purchased by a larger publisher and the website was shut down. To fill the void left by the closing of GigglePoetry, I have created GiggleVerse.com, where I am posting funny kids’ poems every weekday.
GiggleVerse will include funny poems of every sort, including both modern and classic children’s poetry from poets all over the world. The poems are organized by category, including sports, animals, food, monsters, and dozens more. You can even subscribe to get poems delivered to your email inbox five days a week for free.
I’ve been working on this for several months now, and I’m pretty happy with the result. I hope you’ll take a moment to drop by and see the my new creation.
You might know that you can sign up to receive fun kids’ poems in your email from poetry4kids.com. But did you know that we have three different lists you can subscribe to?
The first list sends out a funny poem from one of my books once a week.
The second list sends out the newest poems from my website as soon as they are posted, usually once per week.
The third, and newest, list is from my other website, poetryminute.org. PoetryMinute has 180 poems—one for each day of the school year—from dozens of well-known children’s authors. If you subscribe to this list, you will receive a poem from PoetryMinute in your inbox every day for the next 180 days.
An interjection is a word or phrase that is most often used as an exclamation, such as wow, hey, or ugh, or sometimes used just to stall for time, such as uh, and er. The following list of interjections that rhyme with one another may come in handy for your own poems.
achoo, boo, boo-hoo, eww, no can do, ooh, phew, pooh, shoo, wahoo, whew, whoop-de-doo, woo, woo-hoo, yahoo
One Minute Till Bedtime, an anthology of more than 140 one-minute poems suitable for bedtime, is now available in a German-language edition entitled Jetzt noch ein Gedicht, und dann aus das Licht! (“Now Another Poem, and then the Light”). This collection has been translated by more than 100 German-speaking authors translators and boasts warm and whimsical illustrations by illustrator Christoph Neiman.
With new poems by many of the most beloved and well-known authors of our time, including Jack Prelutsky, Lemony Snicket, Judith Viorst, Jon Sczieska, Jane Yolen, and many, many more, One Minute Till Bedtime is the perfect way to put your little ones to bed.
Ein Fest für Sprachverdreher und Reimkünstler. Von über 100 deutschsprachigen AutorInnen übersetzt – genial illustriert von Christoph Niemann
Ein großer, prächtiger Band voller Gutenachtgedichte – ein ganz besonderes Betthupferl für Kinder und Eltern. Ob Wortspielerei, einfache Reime zum Auswendiglernen und immer wieder Aufsagen oder klassisches Kindergedicht rund um Mond, Sternenhimmel und Teddybär – diese Gedichte sind direkt in die Lebenswelt der Kinder hineingeschrieben von über 130 amerikanischen AutorInnen. Sie stecken voller Abenteuer und Lebensfreude, erzählen von Kinderbuchhelden, Märchenfiguren und Fantasiewesen und wecken die Lust an Sprache und Poesie. Ein Hausbuch für die ganze Familie mit unverwechselbaren Illustrationen von Christoph Niemann. Mit großer Leidenschaft übersetzt von namhaften deutschsprachigen AutorInnen und ÜbersetzerInnen.
For several years now I have been doing live, interactive webinars in conjunction with Streamable Learning, the leading provider of interactive livestreams in the K-12 market in the US and Canada. Through quality educational content and an easy-to-use platform, Streamable Learning aims to in introduce interactive livestreams as a valuable supplemental tool for classrooms and families seeking to inspire and educate their K-12 students.
During the 2019-20 school year, I will be providing 35 online webinars, including interactive poetry-writing lessons, holiday poetry sessions, and programs on famous children’s poets from Dr. Seuss to Shel Silverstein. Schools are invited to join any of these sessions as my guest, completely free of charge.
Streamable Learning and Zoom
If you haven’t yet used Zoom, I think you’re going to love it. Zoom is a free videoconferencing program similar to Skype, but with clearer, more reliable audio and video.
Streamable Learning offers a convenient, cost-effective, and comprehensive calendar of interactive livestreams delivered by subject matter experts and designed to supplement your existing and future lesson plans. To discover hundreds of engaging, educational programs, have a look a their Livestream Calendar.
I have been offering interactive poetry livestreams through Streamable Learning for several years now, and I hope you’ll be able to join me this year. There is no cost for this; you can register for free and participate in as many of these upcoming sessions as you like.
To register, simply click on the links in the schedule below for the sessions you would like to join.
If you would prefer to arrange a private interactive videoconference for your class or school only, simply click here to schedule an online author visit. I look forward to seeing your students online!
Occasionally, I get an email from someone who needs longer poems or shorter poems. They may be looking for something two or three minutes long to recite in a poetry festival. Or they may want poems that are easy to memorize.
And sometimes I get requests from teachers for poems that provide examples of a given poetic technique. It might be alliteration, metaphor, repetition, or some other device.
With more than 700 poems on this website, it will take a while to assign categories and lengths to all of my poems. So don’t be surprised if your favorite poem of mine isn’t yet in the place it belongs. I have organized about 200 poems so far, and will be working on the rest over the coming weeks.
Nevertheless, I hope you find these new features helpful. I hope you not only enjoy reading my poems, but also sharing them with your friends and family. If you are a teacher, feel free to share them with your students and use them to teach poetry in your classroom.
In this lesson, I’ll show you an easy way to write an “onomatopoeia poem,” or what I like to call an “onomatopoem,” even though that isn’t a real word. And I’ll show you why you want to include onomatopoeia in your poems.
An onomatopoeia (pronounced on-uh-mah-tuh-pee-uh) is a word that sounds like the action it describes. For example, the word “boom” sounds like an explosion, and the word “moo” sounds like the noise a cow makes.
Using onomatopoeia in a poem can engage the reader’s senses with more vivid imagery and heightened sensory impact, without having to use additional words. If your poem contains actions, it’s a good idea to include onomatopoeia in your writing. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you were writing a poem about skiing and you said:
Skiing down the snowy hill
This describes what you are doing, and the reader can certainly visualize it. But what if, instead, you said:
Swooshing down the snowy hill
Do you see how this evokes the sense of sound? If gives the reader not just a visual image of the skier, but also the sound that their skis make on the snow, and perhaps even the side-to-side motion of the skis, all without adding extra words.
Poetry Is Condensed Language
Poetry is often described as “condensed language,” meaning that it tries to convey as much meaning and feeling as possible with few words. If you are writing prose—stories, essays, etc.—you still want to be concise; to avoid using unnecessary words. But it’s also okay to be as descriptive as possible.
In poetry, on the other hand, the more meaning or emotion you can pack into just a few words, the better. With onomatopoeia your words can do double duty, conveying both meaning and sensation. Take a look at this excerpt from my poem “What to Do with a Dinosaur” from my book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies.
This morning a dinosaur tromped into school,
ferocious, atrocious, and dripping with drool.
He had to be practically twenty feet tall,
and banged around looking something to maul.
He stomped and he snorted, he bellowed and roared.
His head hit the ceiling and busted a board.
That beast was undoubtedly ready for lunch.
He snatched up a chair in his teeth with a crunch,
I’ve underlined the onomatopoeia words in these two stanzas to make them easier to spot. As you can see, these words not only describe what the dinosaur is doing, but they evoke the sounds he is making as well. Without the onomatopoeia, it would lose a lot of its impact, as you can see below.
This morning a dinosaur came into school,
ferocious, atrocious, and covered with drool.
He had to be practically twenty feet tall,
and walked around looking something to maul.
In other words, as you write, and as you edit and revise your poems, look for opportunities to replace your verbs with ones that also evoke sounds.
An Easy Onomatopoeia Poem
If you are writing rhyming poetry, sometimes you may even want to rhyme some of your onomatopoeia words. To make this as easy as possible, I have created a list of rhyming onomatopoeia words, such as bash / crash / smash, and growl / howl / yowl.
You could even write an entire poem with almost nothing but onomatopoeia words if you like. Just look at the list of rhyming onomatopoeia words and string a few together, like this:
You can write as many lines as you want like this. Then all you need is an ending. Here are a couple of ideas:
These are sounds I heard at home.
My house sounds just like a poem.
Or how about this one?
This is not some great idea.
It’s just onomatopoeia.
Now it’s your turn. If you can add a few more lines of onomatopoeia words to this, and maybe even come up with a different ending, you’ll have created your very own “onomatopoem.”
Learning More about Onomatopoeia in Poetry
If you want to learn even more about onomatopoeia in poems, here are some useful lessons:
Kenn Nesbitt, former U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, is celebrated for blending humor and heart in his poetry for children. Known for books such as "My Cat Knows Karate" and "Revenge of the Lunch Ladies," he captivates young readers globally.
An onomatopoeia is a word whose sound is similar to the action it refers to, such as “buzz” or “hiss.” Using onomatopoetic words in a poem can help increase the sensory impact of the poem, creating vivid imagery because the words themselves evoke sounds as well as meaning.
If you are writing rhyming poetry you may occasional need to include onomatopoeia rhymes in your poems. Here is a list of a few hundred onomatopoeia rhymes you can use as you write.
Down on the ocean floor, deep in the sea, everybody’s dancing. Ready? ONE, TWO, THREE!
All the underwater creatures are having fun dancing in the deep until Shark crashes the party. But what if he just wants to dance too?
I couldn’t be more excited to introduce my newest book, Deep Sea Dance.
Deep Sea Dance is a full-color paperback picture book suitable for children ages 3-7. This charming tale of differences, common bonds, friendship, and dancing — with its bouncy rhythms and eye-popping illustrations — is sure to entrance young readers and their parents and teachers as well.
Order your copy today! Deep Sea Dance is available now wherever books are sold, as well as in ebook format for Amazon Kindle.
In poetry, you will often find that the writer repeats sounds, words, ideas, lines, or even entire stanzas. For example, a poem might start each line with the same words, or it might repeat a stanza several times, making a chorus or “refrain.” When you repeat something in a poem, this is called “repetition.” Repetition helps draw the reader’s attention to a thought, idea, or feeling. It can make the main idea of the poem more memorable. Just as readers enjoy rhythm and rhyme in poems, repetition can also be pleasant. Here are a few ways you can include repetition in your poems.
Repeat the Beginnings of Lines
Probably the easiest way to include repetition in a poem is to repeat the first words of each line through most or all of the poem. Pick a few words that describe the main idea of your poem and use those words over and over again. For example, if you were writing a poem to tell someone how nice they are, you might begin each line with, “I like you because…” If you were writing a poem about what gifts you would like from Santa Claus for Christmas, you might start each line with, “This Christmas I want…”
And your repeated phrase doesn’t have to be long. It can be just one or two words, such as “You are…” or “School is…”
In my poem “I Didn’t Go Camping,” I repeat the words, “I Didn’t…” at the beginning of many of the lines, like this:
I Didn’t Go Camping
I didn’t go camping. I didn’t go hiking. I didn’t go fishing. I didn’t go biking.
I didn’t go play on the slides at the park. I didn’t watch shooting stars way after dark.
I didn’t play baseball or soccer outside. I didn’t go on an amusement park ride.
I didn’t throw Frisbees. I didn’t fly kites, or have any travels, or see any sights.
I didn’t watch movies with blockbuster crowds, or lay on the front lawn and look at the clouds.
I didn’t go swimming at pools or beaches, or visit an orchard; and pick a few peaches.
I didn’t become a guitarist or drummer, but, boy, I played plenty of Minecraft this summer.
I have used this kind of repetition in quite a few poems. If you like poems that repeat the first words of the lines, here are a few more you might enjoy:
Another way to emphasize or strengthen the idea of a poem is to repeat a single line over and over, possibly on every other line.
Here’s an example of a poem where I have repeated a line of conversation where one person says the same thing over and over.
I Need to Go Potty
I need to go potty. Just hold it. You’re fine. I need to go potty. I heard you. Don’t whine. I need to go potty. You just went at noon. I need to go potty. We’re getting there soon. I need to go potty. You’ll just have to wait. I need to go potty. Whoops. Now it’s too late.
In this poem, the repetition of the line, “I need to go potty” emphasizes the urgency with which the speaker is trying to make his or her point. Unfortunately, the other person in the poem — probably the parent — doesn’t realize just how urgent the situation is until it’s too late.
Repeating Several Lines
When you repeat several lines, or an entire stanza, throughout a poem, this is called a “refrain.” In a song it’s called a “chorus.” Using refrains is another way to emphasize or strengthen the main idea or feeling of your poem. And because a refrain in a poem can be just like a chorus in a song, using refrains can make your poems feel or sound more like songs.
Here’s a poem I wrote about a five-year old pirate named Francis who, because of his age, was not yet very good at pirating. Notice that I repeat the same lines at the end of every other stanza, making the poem sound a lot like a “sea shanty” (a sailor’s work song) much like “Yo Ho, Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).”
Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate
He ain’t got a beard and he ain’t got a scar. He ain’t a cantankerous codger. He isn’t a scum with a tankard of rum. He don’t fly a black Jolly Roger.
He ain’t got a parrot that sits on his shoulder. He isn’t all ornery and irate. He’s not old enough to be rugged and rough. He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate. Yo, Ho! Yo, Ho! He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate.
He don’t like to pillage. He don’t like to rob. He don’t like to bury his treasure. He don’t like to shoot or to ransack and loot or commandeer ships for his pleasure.
No ships has he sank or made men walk the plank, or hang from the yardarm and gyrate. And everyone knows he don’t keelhaul his foes. He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate. Yo, Ho! Yo, Ho! He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate.
He ain’t got a cutlass. He ain’t got a sword. He ain’t got a musket or dagger. He ain’t learned his duty to plunder for booty and strut with a braggardly swagger.
He don’t have an eyepatch. He don’t have a hook. He’s barely a buccaneer flyweight He ain’t got no gold cuz he’s not very bold. He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate. Yo, Ho! Yo, Ho! He’s Francis the Five-Year-Old Pirate.
Now It’s Your Turn
At the risk of repeating myself (see what I did there?), repetition can be a very effective way to get your point across in a poem, and to make the poem more memorable and enjoyable to read.
Now that you’ve seen several different ways to include repetition in poems, I hope you’ll be on the lookout for in when you read poetry, and maybe even try your hand at writing some repetition poems of your own.
Kenn Nesbitt, former U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, is celebrated for blending humor and heart in his poetry for children. Known for books such as "My Cat Knows Karate" and "Revenge of the Lunch Ladies," he captivates young readers globally.
For several years now I have been doing live, interactive webinars in conjunction with 
