ABOUT
POETRYWITS
Visiting
Poets/Writers in the Schools
Guide:
Rose Where Did You Get That Red? by Kenneth Koch
Using
Koch's innovative ideas, this project envisions each poet
working with the same class for three hours, divided up
as one hour a week for three consecutive weeks, or as
near to three consecutive weeks as schedules can manage.
By the end of the time each student will have written
a poem or several poems to share with the poet and the
class. Students can adopt a pen name if any are more comfortable
that way.
The
first week the poet presents a poem for the
class to study and model in their own writing. During
this process the poet asks many questions and accept many
answers. He or she provides more examples and then gives
a broad assignment with various "prompts" to
help the writers dive in. One suggestion is that students
try not to use rhyme, since that often results in forced
constructions. (In my experience some students will chose
to use rhythm anyway.)
The
poem that is chosen to model will be taken from one of
the famous poems or common forms in the English /American
lexicon. It will be geared to the grade level of the class.
For example: second graders study one of Basho's haiku,
read a story book based on that and then write their own
haiku.
During
the second session the writers will be helped
to look at ways to revise their work and make it more
exciting by using their senses, colors, questions, foreign
words, similes, metaphors, puns, wit, drawing and more.
Again, the poet gives examples and asks the students to
revise or write another poem. Class members to may read
what they have written, if there is time. The poet can
work with students individually if they have something
to discuss privately.
The
final week involves a celebration of the students'
work. The students read their work, or the poet reads
it for them if that's preferred, and there is a juice
and pretzel snack (or other treat, if that's possible)
to celebrate. It's more fun if various classes can get
together for this reading. Poetrywits would then like
to publish as many of these poems as possible on the website.
The
poets are chosen from interested poet laureates and other
published poets from the Montgomery and Bucks County region.
These are people who often have classroom
experience and wish to volunteer more time because poetry
thrills them and they want to ignite more creative work.
Please
get
in touch with me if you have further questions.
~Elizabeth
Rivers, PoetryWITS
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