March Madness Poetry 2015: I'm an Authlete!

FROM THE DESK OF E. KRISTIN ANDERSON:

 Hey guys! You can actually go and vote for me now. If you like my poem. Which I hope you will. I think you will, anyway. Go go go! www.thinkkidthink.com/5-milest…

I'm doing a thing. And I might go crazy doing it. There's a reason they call it March Madness, after all.


So a few months ago, I got a tweet from Ed DeCaria. It was something along the lines of "I dare you to join my kids' poetry writing cult." No, I'm lying, I don't think he said dare or cult. But he did invite me to check out his March Madness Poetry (#MMPoetry) project at ThinkKidThink.com. I must have gotten a lot of random LOOK AT MY THING tweets that day, because I remember thinking, oh, Mr. DeCaria, you must be nuts if you think you can convince me to do another thing.


But it didn't take much convincing.  Because March Madness Poetry has several things that push my poet buttons:

1. Competition. I mean, hello, it even has brackets. And seeds.

2. Poetry. Duh.

3. Prompts. Each round has a challenge that goes with it. I'm into that.

4. Community. If I was selected, I'd be among 64 poets competing, and that means we'd all get to cheer and jeer each other on.

5. Advocacy for poetry in the classroom and children's literacy. Classrooms full of actual kids get to vote on the poems. And they get to win books of poetry. So much awesome!

So I was in. Even though I'm always doing all of the things. And in April I'll be doing about a million things. And March hasn't exactly been, you know, quiet.  But items 1-5 had me applying pretty quickly.

Fie thee, DeCaria.


As you're reading this I've already turned in my first poem. I have my fingers crossed that I can beat out my first opponent. (No hard feelings, of course.) And I can't wait to see how everything plays out.

So keep an eye on ThinkKidThink.com, get ready to get spammed by #MMPoetry tweets, and read lots of poetry by those of us in the competition. I'm ready to take home the Thinkier trophy. (Yep, there's a trophy.) Or at least do everything I can to get my hands on it. You know, with words and stuff.


For more information on the project, check out the website. And follow @EdDeCaria on Twitter! And, you know, follow along. I think this madness is going to be a boatload of fun.