Halloween is a little over a week away. To add to the fun, I have a little challenge for you!

Using my free Verbatim 2 app, try and memorize a Halloween poem by the time Halloween itself arrives!

This purpose of this challenge, of course, to help you learn both how to use the app, and to have a fun poem you can recite at your halloween gathering!

If you've never used the Verbatim app before, you'll definitely want to watch the instructional video (at the link above), as well as use a short poem.

What are some good short Halloween poems? Children's poet Kenn Nesbitt always has a good selection of poems at his site. Among the ones I suggest are Boney Mahoney, I'm Not Afraid of the Dark, Melvin the Mummy, or My Brother's Not a Werewolf (this last one is best recited by kids).

If you're up for a longer work, try I Cloned Myself on Friday Night, or Oh My Darling, Frankenstein (the fact that it's sung to Clementine helps). Here's a video of the latter being performed at a school presentation:



You might know the classic Halloween movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, but did you know that it was based on an original poem of the same name by Tim Burton? Christopher Lee gives an excellent reading of this poem here.

Of course, the most classic Halloween poem has to be Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. That classic is 108 lines long, so it may seem difficult to learn in less than a week. However, when I decided I was going to memorize this poem, it only took me 3 days to learn this, using the Verbatim 2 app.

Another good classic that's a challenge is The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service (click here to listen to the author read his poem). If you've never read this poem, take this opportunity to read or listen to it now.

Because the Verbatim 2 app requires text input, I've tried to include links to the text version of all the poems above. If you're not above doing a little transcribing while listening to a poem, there are also several good poem for Halloween in my Bizarre Poetry post.

Those are my suggestions, but don't let that stop you from exploring on your own. Do you have an favorite Halloween poems, especially ones you've memorized?