Today we are delighted to welcome the wonderful and hilarious Bob Raczka to the blog. Bob is a prolific writer and artist whose work always pushes the boundaries of the experimental and visually intriguing.

We are excited to announce the 2017 Poetry Teatime Photo Contest! This week, we invite all Poetry Teatime enthusiasts to record your family's teatime and enter our contest for the chance to win a whole host of exciting tea and poetry-themed prizes!

[UPDATED] We have a winner! Find out who below.

We invite you to enrich your poetry teatimes with some of our favorite selections of poetry! Purchase the titles below or download this printable list to take with you to the library (includes Dewey Decimal numbers).

Rhymes are one of the most exciting elements of poetry. They are created by using the same or similar sounds in different words, usually at the end of words. Rhymes help to connect lines of poetry together and give poetry its songlike quality. If you’ve ever sung a lullaby or read a nursery rhyme aloud, you’ll notice how important the rhymes are to capturing kids’ attention.

The sky on a clear day is like the inside of a huge balloon swelling up, up, up into space. My cat is a wisp of smoke that slips between the gap in the fence on a cold morning. What do both of these sentences have in common? They use the wonderful tools of metaphors and similes to craft images.

Today we are delighted to welcome the wonderful Irene Latham to the Poetry Teatime blog. Irene is an author and poet who has written two novels for children and multiple volumes of poetry for both children and adults. Last year, she received the prestigious International Literary Association’s Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award. Her works span continents from small towns in Alabama to the wastes of Antarctica. Enjoy getting to know Irene more in the interview below!

Kwame Alexander is one cool customer and we got to interview him for a special bonus podcast!

Kwame is the Newbery winning poet whose books are turning a whole generation of Internet gamers and readers into lovers of poetry! For that achievement, he gets a Poetry Teatime High Five!

What does the word “sonnet” remind you of? Often, when we think of a sonnet, we think of love poems. Since the Renaissance, the sonnet has been considered one of the highest forms of the English language--perfect for writing about love. Today, the 14 lines of sonnets still convey powerful messages. Read on to dig into more of the form and delights of sonnets!