Try Putting Lipstick on a Landfill - enter Staten Island Haiku Contest on Freshkills Landfill-to-Park project

Heh heh. This is a good one, gentle readers. Staten Island Parks Department is running a haiku poetry contest enticing poets to write a traditional haiku form meditation on the natural transformation of Freshkills Landfill into Freshkills Park, the city's most important new Park in 100 years. Go to this site and click on the e-mail link to enter the contest by - Friday, April 24 at 5:00pm. All I can say is - Talk about lipstick on a pig!

Haiku, in short form (pun intended), is written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables; in order to qualify as traditional Haiku Japanese verse the haiku must mention some element of nature or one of the seasons. Good luck to all who enter this unusual endeavor! Now... 1...2...3... everyone... grab your lipstick!

And now, just to mention a few of my favorite haiku haunts: an old friend, Paul David Mena, the Haiku Poet; David Rheins Blog, Haiku.com; and Like My Haiku.com.

National Poetry Month kick-off!

What better way to jumpstart Poetmeister 4 Poets! after a longish hiatus than start off National Poetry Month with a shout out to all my favorite poetry sites & blogs, and then some! I've truly missed, over the past months, my usual blog-hopping forays; it looks like the dust is settling over our homestead at last which will allow me to resume my blogging

• I shall start things off by giving a high-five to Joe Felso, er, David Marshall, of Joe Felso: Ruminations, for his newest start-up blogs, Haiku Streak and Signals to Attend, which I'm just starting to "get to know." You may remember that Joe Felso/David Marshall is one of my favorite online educators and excellent writer of haiku! Welcome back to the blogging world, David! I'll be stopping in again soon to catch up with your comings and goings.
  
• You must go to Poets Who Blog and give some luv to Sara who puts in endless hours of superb writing on All Things Poetry - for a community of some of the most talented, unique, innovative poets in cyberworld. Poets Who Blog site has undergone a new look which really pops! Great job, Sara. Kudos to you for your tenacity and perseverance in providing the best information hub to the online poetry world!
• Don't forget to check in with these great blog sites, too; World Class Poetry, Billy the Blogging Poet, Blogsboro Poetry Club, Asphalt Sky , Glenn Buttkus' Feel Free to Read & Silliman's Blog!
  
• Rick Mobb of Mine Enemy Grows Older still continues to amaze me with his enormous talents and vision, and heart for social justice. Read Rick's newest poem, and now she's awake here. And Just Paisley continues to awe us with her poems & writings with their perfect complementary photo or artistic embellisment. Scot Young's Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers still rocks for me. Go give some luv - now!
  
• I'm totally taken by several new blogs I've discovered or been introduced to recently: Bryan Borland's SHAKE and David Rheins Blog.

These few highlighted sites ought to keep you busy kicking off April's National Poetry Month! At least until I return with more places to check out - and more poetry, of course.. ;>