Meet Clever

Poetry I t's something every parent fears. It's something you never thought would happen to your  kid. Sure, you've seen it in movies and on television. But in your own house? It's a scary thought. What you need to realize, however, is that there is a right and a wrong way to talk to your children about their poetry. It's important to maintain a calm and comfortable atmosphere. Let's take a look at the healthiest ways to confront your children if you ever catch them writing poetry. 1. Try to understand Your first reaction might be to freak out and respond with anger. Don't. Understand that, while it's natural for your children to experiment with poetry at some point in their life, the problem will not go away on its own. Start an open dialogue. Make sure your child is comfortable talking with you in an open and honest way. Ask them exactly how  much poetry they've written and find out why. "Poetry, no matter the form you find your chil...

The road into town is lined on both sides with conifers and brown fences that divide houses’ gravel driveways. The road winds downhill with switchback corners that overlook the city which, at around 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in November, is often blanketed in translucent fog like fresh cold oxygen straight from a clear plastic breathing tube. There’s one particular stretch of road where great firs and pines reach their boughs to the opposite side of the street and graze their needles with the dying leaves of red and orange maples. It’s as if the pines and firs are comforting the maples as they lose their leaves, holding their hands as the cold wind slowly shakes the branches barren so the leaves fall to root beds and asphalt. Some are blown onto the road where passing logging trucks and station wagons scatter them over front lawns where they’re raked up and burned in slash piles like plagued hospital gowns.  The smell of burning leaves and wood fireplaces wafts into my ca...

Carl and I sat beside his father’s oscillating sprinkler in the middle of July. A paper plate covered in watermelon rinds and black seeds lay by our bare feet. On the sidewalk beside Carl’s front yard, hockey sticks and a Calgary Flames jersey baked in the sun.  “What do you want to do?” I asked Carl who sat on the opposite side of the sprinkler. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” He tilted his head forward as the streams of cold water came his way. “I asked you.” In the silence that followed, I picked at the grass between my legs and threw the green blades up into the air watching them flutter back to the wet lawn. The asphalt warped the air into hot waves of distortion. That far off summer-time hum was louder than ever. “Well, if you really want to do something,” he said, shifting to a more upright position in the grass, “we could go to PlaySpot .” “What’s Playspot ?” I asked, also shifting upright. Carl’s eyes widened into an over exaggerated look ...