All posts in Haines

In The Black: Blackout Poetry

Blackout Poetry: A blackout poem is created when a poet takes a marker (usually black marker) to already established text–like that from a newspaper–and starts redacting words until a poem is formed or an […]

“Portrait of a Grandmother”

Last week with Haines 4th grade after school poetry group, we talked about grandparents. Some of us live far away from our grand parents, some of us see one or both of our grandparents […]

‘I believe you will be deeply touched.’: Video-Inspired Poems

Students watched a bear cam video similar to the one described in the poem we studied, ‘There was this bear cam’ by critic and poet, Sandra Simonds. Sandra Simonds charts the formations and deformations […]

“We Are from the World”

Fresh from spring break, Haines after-school poetry group met for a round table reading of Because You Matter by Tami Charles. From there, we returned to the “Who I Belong To” lesson created around […]

“Let us meet again,”: Poem Revisions

This week, students revised poems about place, meditation, and food that they had worked on earlier in the residency. Lesson Note: “In working on a poem, I love to revise….in the process of revision […]

‘over you over and over and over again’: Repetition Poems

We explored the powerful device of Repetition in Phil Kaye’s poem of the same name. Lesson Note: Writer/Performer Anna Deavere Smith who interviews people and then writes those interviews down verbatim like poetry, insists […]

Odes After School

Poetry students in Haines after school program talked about the difference between biography and autobiography. We then read “Ode to My Size” by Peter Acosta, in which the young poet accepts and celebrates that […]

‘100 push-ups/ 100 sit-ups/ 100 squats’: Superhero Poems

What makes a hero (both real or imagined), and how can we learn from them (even the villains) and the inner-hero inside of us? We explored those concepts and more in What I Learned […]

Haines Word Power

Last week Haines 4th grade after-school session was joined by Principal Moy! We talked about the power of words. Then each took a turn coming up with lines to create a first draft of […]

‘In a tiny house’: Food and Memory Poems

In this lesson, we talked a lot about food and our likes and dislikes and what makes our ‘taste’ uniquely ours. Poems need not always be hard to decipher. Distilling a moment is often […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET