All posts in Ola Faleti

Metaphors, two ways

During our 3rd poetry session at Waters Elementary, we tackled one of the most omnipresent forces in poetry – the metaphor! First, we listened to “Firework” by Katy Perry to find the metaphor there. […]

Who are our people and how do we find them?

Hello hello! For our second week at Waters Elementary, we discussed stanzas and we discussed what it means to belong. Our poem for the day was José Olivarez’s “I Walk Into Every Room and […]

Exploring Our Writing Impulses at Waters

Greetings, supporters and poetry lovers! This past Wednesday I was thrilled to kick off a yearlong residency with the 6th grade classes at Waters Elementary. After learning more about students’ likes and loves, their […]

Ending with Blackout Poems

Our short and sweet FORA residency came to a close last week. In our last session we explored blackout poems, which are always popular regardless of age. After viewing some cool examples, we turned […]

Writing From Joy

For our 4th FORA session, we talked about writing from a place of joy. To me, there’s no better example than the wonderful Ross Gay. We read “Sorrow Is Not My Name” together, digging […]

Celebration and Slam!

Alas, two weeks ago we closed out a stellar term of poetry with Bronzeville Classical’s 3rd and 4th grade students! On our final day, we didn’t write poems; instead we watched slam performances from […]

The Ars Poetica

Greetings, Bronzeville Classical Friends! In our nine weeks together, Bronzeville Classical students have written so many different kinds of poems broaching all different kids of topics. I don’t really believe in poetry “experts” (the […]

Blackout Poetry

For our 8th week at Bronzeville Classical, we dove into the fun world of blackout (also known as erasure) poems. We took a look at many examples, including from the acclaimed “Steal This Book” […]

Our People and Where We Find Them

Somehow, we’re already at the halfway point of our short and sweet May residency with FORA. Two questions that anchored our third session were 1) where do we find “our people” and 2) is […]

An Ode A Day Keeps The Doctor Away

Who doesn’t love some good gossip? In our second week at FORA, we discussed odes and tried writing our own. We looked at Safia Elhillo’s “Ode to Gossips” and explored the poem’s vivid language […]

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