All posts in Poetry

‘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 […]

Cutting Up!: Collage Poems

Students used magazines and created cut-up poems! They used ‘found language’ and images to create new meaning. Lesson Note: Creative Artist guru Julia Cameron says the part of us that creates art is about […]

‘and then your heart will/ start to hear like a drum’: Open Mic Poems

Students wrote poems in the ‘Open Mic’ style after reading the poem by Black poet and playwright Zetta Elliot’s piece, ‘Mic Check.’ Lesson Note: Making your own work is really important. [We] made work […]

‘Because everyone has a right to…’ Because-style Poems

Students read Shirley Geok-Lin Lim’s poem ‘Learning to Love America’ before they wrote their own ‘Because’ poems. Lesson Note: Born in Malacca, Malaysia, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim was raised by her Chinese father and attended […]

Dynamic Duo

The class asked, what does it feel like to compose a single poem for two different voices, rather than for one? How does harmonizing and speaking in unison feel? How does clashing feel? What […]

‘And the tape wears off and the streamers…’: Party Poems.

Students imagined life as a party and wrote poems using that metaphor based on Jason Shinder’s poem, ‘The Party.’ Lesson Note: “Find some humility, or it will find you.”― Jason Shinder, poet Mrs. McClain, […]

‘Remember that love is free’: Poems on Memory

Students wrote memory list poems based on Joy Harjo’s poem, ‘Remember’. Lesson Note: Harjo’s work is often autobiographical, informed by the natural world, and above all preoccupied with survival and the limitations of language. […]

‘impossible….good’: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 or image is formed. […]

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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