All posts in chicago poetry center

‘This world placed into a small wooden board called/ a table’: Joy Harjo-inspired Poems

A common household object became the focus of this lesson  while studying Joy Harjo’s poem, Perhaps The World Ends Here.  The poet James Merrill once commented, ‘we understand history from the family around the table.’ […]

‘wrapped in a dress of seaweed..’ Simply Exquisite!

Students crafted visual and then poetic Exquisite Corpses! It’s a great way to work with one line at a time, which was the goal! Afterward, they were challenged to create a clay figure of […]

‘Unity’: A Series of Blackout Poems

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 […]

Cutting Up: Collage Poems

Students used magazines to create cut-up or collage poems, using ‘found language’ and images to create new meaning. Contributors are: 7th and 8th Grade Students from Mrs. McClain’s Classroom: Piper M., Sloan L., Noah […]

Summering Party

Sayre 7th graders recalled the key terms: imagery and line. Looking to Parneshia Jones’ “For The Basement Parties at the YMCA” they sought out rich images, striking sounds, and astute line breaks. Then, they […]

‘Meowtastic’ & ‘She was a woman changed by his blood ‘: Hero & Villian Acrostic Poems

Students wrote Acrostic Poems, in which certain letters in each line form a word or words. The theme was ‘Heroes,’ both real and imagined, or Supervillains. Lesson Note: “You don’t need permission to make […]

‘What is 7th Grade?’: 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 […]

‘I did/a good job, and I stayed in the game/all day.’: Poems in the form of Letters

Students wrote epistolary poems in the form of letters, fashioned after basketball player Kobe Bryant’s poem, “Dear Basketball.” Lesson Note: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what […]

‘with twigs and mud and worms for eating’: 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 […]

Sharing Know-How

Our Sayre students’ read the poem, “The Gift” by Ocean Vuong and considered the intertwining of narrative and imagery. We were especially struck by “the b bursting its belly/ as dark dust blows/ through […]

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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