The Hale 6-8th grade poetry club is a musical bunch. For the last few weeks, we’ve been compiling some of our favorite tunes onto a playlist that’s often the soundtrack to our writing sessions. I figured it would be a good opportunity to spend the week bridging connections between poetry and our favorite songs. On Tuesday, we played a riveting game of Word Karaoke that consisted of students compiling their favorite lyrics on a board, then selecting a brand new lyric to write a poem based on. Students filled the board with lyrics from artists like Adele and My Chemical Romance, adding a special twist on the lyrics that spoke to them. On Wednesday, we talked about meter, or the beats that exist in poetry. We practiced identifying the meter of the poem, then traced the rhythm of the 90s grunge song. After reading Gwendolyn Brooks’s We Real Cool and listening to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, Miley was inspired to write a poem based on a lyric and following the beat pattern of the song.
Losing and gaining sleep,
Losing friends and gaining bad and good,
fake and real.
Worried what people will think I hide, and
I’m good at it.
Working hard and still dropping grades, check
again, starting to worry, one last time, check.
Much better.
I’m worst at what I do best.
