Covid-19 by Audrey Chuang, 11 The news rings in my head The anger and negativity swirling around me I can’t settle My heart won’t settle Everyone’s hearts won’t settle Every pair of anxious eyes Waiting for the image For the image Of crime Death The old book that I have read millions of times by now Is wrinkled And words are faded I can’t go outside to play I can’t imagine without going to the library I can’t imagine without reading a new book I can feel my heart beating every time Something bad happens like the stock Rising up and down Like the heartbeat of a patient Waiting for the doctor I can feel the pain that the world is facing It feels like its pulse is in my hands Ready like a flying fish Out in the sky Open to the new Open wide world That used to be Full of people Now nothing But a mere ghost town Waiting to swallow you up And make you face the crime And the pain people are talking about in the news You know it You have it You feel the pain of who you are Until you fall into the jaws Of the people Who recovered And died You don’t know who is next But it may be you Watch out for the coronavirus Doctors and nurses Are waiting to See how to stop the jaws Of the Covid-19. Every time I turn on the TV, I see the Covid-19 update, just like when my mom turns on her phone, all she sees is the updates of more face masks, homemade food or some sort of thing that relates to Covid-19. I wrote the poem ‘Covid-19’ because it mattered to me and the rest of the world. When I started to write this poem, I felt this was very important to me as there was something behind it and I wouldn’t know until I finished it. I knew that on the day I started writing this poem it gave me inspiration to rethink the people and the world around me. What I want to express in this poem is that the Covid-19 is very dangerous and still, some people are not taking it seriously and this is risking doctors, nurses, and others’ lives. Just like a flying fish wanting to fly and see the world and see what it feels to be out of the water, and to watch out for the sky and waters above and beneath, people need to be careful of Covid-19 and keep social distance before we defeat this virus. Always, there is a lantern of hope in my heart, and for that, my poem has the shape of a lantern to let people see it as a kindle of hope. Audrey Chuang, 11 Portland, OR
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Daily Creativity #21 | Flash Contest: Write a Poem about Something in Your Kitchen
Go into the kitchen. Stand in front of a cupboard with food in it (or the fridge). Close your eyes, open the door (or better still, have someone else open it for you), stretch out your hand, and touch something. Keep your hand where it is. Open your eyes. Look at the thing you are touching. Congratulations! You just found the object that you are going to write a poem about.
Saturday Newsletter: April 18, 2020
“Web Dweller” by Anya Geist, 12 From Stone Soup April 2020 A note from William Joyful news! This newsletter is dedicated to the newest member of our Stone Soup family, Editor Emma Wood’s first child, Margot Dylan Bassett-Wood, who was born last week. Congratulations to Emma and her husband, Conner. This is a very strange time to be born into our world. I would like each of you to find a way to say a welcome to Margot. Margot has very special parents, so I know she is a very lucky child. She lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in a redwood forest, so her first vision of the outside world will be these huge amazing trees. Emma is not checking her Stone Soup email, but if those of you who write poetry would like to write a poem for Margot, I know that Emma will value whatever you send. You can email your poem to me with the subject line, “For Margot,” and I will be sure that Emma receives it so she can read it to her daughter. The email address to use is stonesoup@stonesoup.com. This is a very emotional time for all of us. I am writing this on April 15, which is always a very emotional day for me. This is the 45th anniversary of my mother’s death. She died two years after I founded Stone Soup. My mother gave me so much: my life, of course, but also my world view and the encouragement and money to make Stone Soup possible. We all owe this wonderful project to her, and so I also dedicate this newsletter to my mother. These are eventful times! It is a long newsletter today. Please stay with me. There is a lot to say. Thank you, team! Before getting into the heart of the newsletter, our first project, and lots of news, I would like to thank my colleagues for the huge amount of work they have put into getting our coronavirus programs up and running. Monday will be our 21st Daily Creativity Prompt, and we now have two Zoom workshops running, a new COVID-19 blog with daily posts, and a weekly Flash Contest. The heavy lifting for all this has been carried by Jane Levi, who, like me, has been working unpaid for the past three years. Sarah Ainsworth, a graduate student in Library Science, has been going the extra mile on top of her coursework. Our newest colleague, Laura Moran, who manages the Stone Soup Refugee Project (more on its status in a future newsletter) has stepped in to run the Wednesday Book Group on top of being a parent and an adjunct professor in cultural anthropology. (Also, Emma wrote a large number of the prompts before taking maternity leave.) Thank you. This week’s art—and William’s weekend project What a gorgeous photograph! A tour de force. A story told with a limited color palette—golden brown, silver, grey, and black. Anya Geist has titled the image Web Dweller. At the moment, all of us are house dwellers. Our houses are closed boxes. Her spider’s dwelling is as open as open can be. It is also a trap. An engineering marvel. And exceedingly beautiful. Anya’s vision of this spider and her web at night is told with boldness and subtlety. Sharp lines and blurred light. We all have spiders in our houses, so spiders make the perfect COVID-19 photography project. One thing we all have right now is lots of time. So, find a web, and take the time to observe it closely. And photograph it in different lights and from different angles. Send us the images you like the best by going to the submissions link. COVID-19 projects update We have two groups meeting via Zoom every week: the Wednesday Book Group (ages 10–13) and the Friday Writing Workshop (all ages). To receive the link detailing how to join these groups, you must sign up for the Daily Creativity prompts that we are sending out Monday through Friday. Monday will be the 21st prompt. Please look below for the winners of this week’s Weekly Flash Contest. Remember, the first prompt of the week is the prompt to use when you enter the contest, and entries are due at midnight on Friday of the week. This week’s story—and some thoughts on writing serials You might have noticed that we brought forward the launch of our second annual Book Contest. I hope you are all thinking about your entries for this year! But this week, I want to talk about last year’s Book Contest because this month everyone can finally start reading some of 2019’s winning work! In this month’s issue of Stone Soup, you can enjoy the first part of nine-year-old Hannah Nami Gajcowski’s inventive adventure, the novella Elana. Elana won third prize in last year’s Book Contest and is appearing in three parts over the April, May, and June issues of Stone Soup. Hannah has invented a world populated with colorful characters and filled with fantastical adventure. Congratulations, Hannah, on writing a wonderful book. We are very excited to be publishing it in Stone Soup and thrilled to be sharing it with all our readers at last! Publication in serial form was a common model in the nineteenth century. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) wrote many of his most famous novels week by week for publication in parts in newspapers and magazines. This imposes quite a discipline on a writer. You need to be very organized. You must make it easy for the reader to keep track of all your characters, remember what has happened to them in past episodes, and make sense of what might happen to them in the future, without lots of repetition and reminders. You also need to be able to retain a reader’s interest in every section of the story: each episode has to be able to stand on its own, with its own arc, as well as earn its place in a larger narrative. If, like Dickens, you have a huge cast of characters, you need to make sure that your reader can still remember about one group while you are talking about another. It’s a big challenge! Elana wasn’t originally written to be published in episodic form, but the inventiveness of
