Day 18: Playing with Poetry by Dara Weaver

I have always been in love with words and read everything I could get my hands on as a child. The first time I remember hearing the music of spoken poetry was while watching the movie Anne of Green Gables as a young girl, when she quoted parts of the poem, “The Lady of Shalott”, by Tennyson. Not having the internet back then, I scoured the poetry section of the Childcraft encyclopedia and every literature textbook in the house (I was home schooled) in search of the rest of the poem. I didn’t find a copy of that poem until I was a teen, but my search for it introduced me to a world of poetry I would have never been looking for otherwise. I kept of notebook of favorite poems all through my teen years, and it’s still something I treasure.

Being a (recovering) perfectionist, I only wrote a few poems when the inspiration struck me, and I kept even fewer of them, but when a friend started publishing her poems on her blog and began bringing up questions as to the proper how-tos of writing poetry, I began to realize how much I didn’t know about the subject. This sparked a renewed interest for me and I began reading poetry again, and reading about how poetry is written. I would hardly be qualified to be writing a post about writing poetry except that the theme is about playing with poetry, and that is something I am really enjoying right now, in little snatches of time that I grab as a little something I can do to for a little “me” time. Here are some ideas for beginning to play with poetry-

:: Read poetry! I’ve been picking up cheap paperback editions of poetry at my local thrift stores- Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickenson, etc, and reading a poem or two before bed. And read poetry to your children! They love the rhythm and music of the words.

:: Read about poetry appreciation. Right now I’m working my way through the book How to Read a Poem, by Burton Raffel.

An excellent resource I have found for teaching my children to appreciate poetry is Michael Clay Thompson’s books on poetry, these are a part of his language arts curriculum, but can be used alone. They’re interesting enough to read for fun!

:: Read about how to write poetry. The books on my shelf right now are Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, and Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, as well as The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.

:: If you’ve never tried your hand at writing poetry, try it for yourself! If it seems intimidating to you, try a simple form, like Japanese Haiku. The rules are simple, and the poems, by nature, are very short. Here is a link to an article about writing Haiku.

:: Explore writing poetry with your children! My favorite book on teaching children poetry, A Celebration of Bees, by Barbara Esbenson, gives the great idea of putting up a white board and choosing a subject, such as Rain. Brainstorm all the words you and the children can think up that have to do with rain, or that make you think of rain, or that rain reminds you of. Write these words all over the white board. Examples might be: Wet, Sliver, Rivers, Droplets, Gray, etc. Use these words as inspiration as you write a poem about the subject. (Haikus are a very easy way to begin teaching children about writing poetry as well, if you want to begin by teaching them a simple style of poetry.)

:: Start a collection of your own personal favorite poems in a notebook, and have your children do the same. Someday it will be a very special notebook full of words with which you have made a personal connection.

:: Use pretty writing or a nice font on the computer to display poetry around the house. You can even change it out seasonally- for instance, in the spring I like to hang Robert Frost’s poem, Nature’s First Green is Gold. Even though I am not an excellent artist, I like to write out poems and illustrate them with a few pretty garnishes in ink and watercolor. Look at illustrated poems on Pinterest and Etsy for inspiration.

:: Most of all, find poetry that you enjoy, and find a way to interact with it. Memorize it (that’s the best way to really enjoy the lyric and music of the words- when you know it so well that you can let the tones in your voice illuminate the meaning of the words), print it and put it up where you can see it, illustrate it, whatever is meaningful to you.

I’m so thankful that my friend has the courage to put down her words and write poetry, whether it conforms to traditional forms or not… her determination to push past perfectionism and do what moves her inspires me to play with poetry, and makes a place for it in my life. I hope this inspires you to find a way to do the same!