Poetry

My Emerging Trends group is working on Makerspaces in the middle school library. While exploring options in the language arts content area I came across visual poetry. I love the tips provided on the Power Poetry website on how to write visual poetry and the Poetry Foundation provides some great resources.

I was trying to get some research done while hosting a play date for my ten-year old son. As I was browsing through different resources, he and his three friends decided to engage in a Nerf war. It was also during this time that my thirteen-year-old son decided to practice the piano. He’s working on an easier version of Caprice and a contemporary Christian piece, “Good, Good Father.” Instead of feeling like the noise and activity were competing against each other, it was as if they were a harmonious reflection of our crazy household. I can barely put into words how full my heart felt but the noise did it all for me. It made me think of another option to poetry expression – music.

Last year was my first at my library and I wasn’t sure what to do for National Poetry Month. There wasn’t a lot of traffic when I started so I experimented. And when there wasn’t a steady flow of newcomers, I felt like the little things I did could serve as appreciation for the faithful few. 

One of my students created this poster and we put scrolls of poems inside the pockets.

On another day, I provided pages from old books, markers and colored pencils, and created a black-out poetry station. I’ll try to fish out the examples my students and I made. One day we invited performers from Get Lit (getlit.org) to share their personal works with students. The spoken word revolution has had a huge following and has experienced great success; I was embarrassed that I hadn’t already known more about it.

All this to say that sometimes it can be difficult for people to convey meaning in the traditional structure of the written word and when we can provide creative and alternative outlets of expression, we give them a voice.