This week, Hale students put their imagery creating skills to the test. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed that students have a particular love for including nature imagery in their poems. To stretch their limits a bit, I thought it would be nice to spend each day focused on a different natural element, then writing poems that include imagery never used before. On Tuesday, we read Donika Kelly’s “Self-Portrait as a Body, a Sea” and admired the wide breadth of sea creatures included in the poem. Students then wrote their own self-portrait poems, comparing themselves to bodies of water.
On Wednesday, Langston Hughes’s poem “Our Land” encouraged us to dream up new worlds of our own. The poets included details about new lands reflective of the worlds they wanted for themselves. Here’s a poem from Robyn about their dream land:
Although the snow thwarted our open mic plans, we’ll be back at it next week with new poems to write. Until next time.
This is my land
A land of nightingale brown water
elegant swirls of sage
they flow around you.
A land of tropicals
Houseplants are towering cities around you
