NATIONAL POETRY MONTH
YOUNG PEOPLE’S POETRY WEEK
A good basic reference for teachers and poets:
THE TEACHERS & WRITERS: HANDBOOK OF POETIC FORMS, edited by Ron Padgett (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2cd ed. 2000).
LITTLE CORNER ACTIVITY:
1. Look into your own backyard or nearby park. What do you see?
2. Put pencil to paper and write or draw the things that you saw without stopping.
3. Try to arrange a few words and feelings into short lines.
4. Think about fitting the ideas into a fun poetry form—an alphabet poem or a list poem. A haiku is short. A prose poem is longer. A couplet is just two lines that usually rhyme.
Here is my couplet poem:
In my garden, lives a green anole. He turns brown
when I chase him into the primroses that grow all ‘round.
Will I write another two lines? What else do I want to say?
5. So keep writing—the secret to finding success is to never give up. If you write and read, you will be a better writer and reader.
Poetry books for reading aloud:
YOU COME TOO: FAVORITE POEMS FOR YOUNG READERS by Robert Frost (Henry Holt, 1959).
A FAMILY OF POEMS: MY FAVORITE POETRY FOR CHILDREN, edited by Caroline Kennedy (Hyperion, 2005).
SHARING THE SEASONS: A BOOK OF POEMS, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010).
More books for poetry study:
A POETRY HANDBOOK by Mary Oliver (Harcourt Brace, 1994).
RULES FOR THE DANCE by Mary Oliver (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
A POET’S GUIDE TO POETRY by Mary Kinzie (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
