- BY: Rinnah Shaw
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Are you looking for a way to collect and organize your poems into a manuscript that might one day be published as a chapbook or full-length collection of poetry? Join the Chicago Poetry Center […]
- BY: Poetry Center
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Letter sent by CPC Executive Director to all board, staff, and Poets in Residence on Monday, February 3, 2025: As news mounts of organizations changing their values or language due to pressure from the […]
- BY: Poetry Center
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From February through June of 2025, the Chicago Poetry Center is offering free online Critical Conversations: Anti-Racism sessions open to all. Drawing on CPC’s decades of workshop facilitation, Critical Conversations use poetry as a […]
- BY: Noel Quinones
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Many of our 5 senses are deeply connected to memory. This week the 7th graders of Clinton reflected on their favorite foods and the people, places, and things connected to them. After reading “From […]
- BY: Noel Quinones
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Many of our 5 senses are deeply connected to memory. This week the 8th graders of Clinton reflected on their favorite foods and the people, places, and things connected to them. After reading “From […]
- BY: Joy Young
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This past Thursday, I was excited to meet Twain 5th graders for the start of our 10-week residency. Some students I had worked with last year as 4th graders, so it’s great to see […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For their 12th week of poetry O-School students explored myths. A myth is an ancient story or legend explaining the early history of a group of people or about a natural phenomenon. Students were […]
- BY: Josie Levin
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This week 6th and 7th graders worked together to create exquisite corpse poems. Each student responded to a prompt “What animal scares you the most?” and passed their papers to the next student to […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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For our last session with Waters 7th graders before spring break, it felt fitting to explore the haiku. This traditional Japanese poetic form is often used to describe observations in nature, and often accompanied […]
- BY: Larry Dean
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The speaker in Sonia Sanchez’s “This Is Not a Small Voice” talks about “large / voice[s] coming out,” listing the names of a half-dozen children “navigating the hallways / of our schools spilling out […]
- BY: Cai Sherley
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This week at Hyde Park we discussed calls to action and what it means to push for changes large and small. These young men brought their grievances and visions to the table, confronting everything […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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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. […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Colors are all around us, and some show up in our lives more than others. For this 15th week at Waters, we talked about the colors that are meaningful to us. We watched the […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Monday March 17th was a magnificent day for the Poetry Out Loud 2025 Illinois State Competition. In Illinois this year, 48 high schools were part of Poetry Out Loud, 200 teachers, and over 7,900 […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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What were our favorite TV shows when we were young? What did they teach us? What makes a hero (both real and imagined), and how can we learn from them (even the villains) and […]
- BY: Madison Mae Parker
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At Henry Elementary, we looked at Chen Chen’s poem “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” and explored our own list of future possibilities! Following Chen Chen’s model […]
- BY: Madison Mae Parker
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At Social Justice HS, we studied how to incorporate conversational language into poetry by analyzing Anis Mojgani’s “To Where the Trees Grow Tall.” How can conversations be a doorway into another world? How can […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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In our recent sessions, Swift 2nd graders were counting down the hours before spring break began! We read “Ode to My Shoes” by Francisco X. Alarcón, and talked about giving non-human things – like […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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This week we had in indoor snowball fight! Well, sort of. We used a fabulous lesson plan by fellow CPC poet-in-residence Fulamusu Bangara where students write down responses to winter-inspired writing prompts on different […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For our 11th week of poetry, O-School students shared their thoughts about Spring Break. Usually during Spring Break, people take vacations or stay at home for self-care and rest. A few students mentioned how […]
- BY: Russell Price
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This week the young vikings explored cinematic approaches to poetry. They read “Please Refrain from Talking During the Movie” by Robert Polito and “Movie” by Eileen Myles. It was the toughest week to narrow […]
- BY: Claire Scott
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The Chicago Poetry Center presents BLUE HOUR, a free monthly in-person reading series and generative writing workshop at Haymarket House, 800 W. Buena. Our April featured readers are Ayokunle Falomo and Viola Lee. The […]
- BY: Cai Sherley
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Alice Walker’s poem “Calling All Grand Mothers”, inspired Lawndale to make their own calls this week. The theme was Calls To Action, bringing people together to make things happen. After having students brainstorm all […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Colors, colors, colors. There are many poems, songs, and paintings devoted to particular colors and how they show up in our lives. So during out 14th session with Waters 7th graders, we explored colors. […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Last week, Waters 6th graders read and wrote self-portrait poems. First, students drew a “cartoon” self portrait of themselves, some of them in human form and some in the form of a different creature. […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students read Langston Hughes’ poem, ‘Motto,’ and then wrote their short poems using modern slang. “Motto” by Langston Hughes I play it cool And dig all jive That’s the reason I stay alive. My […]
- BY: Madison Mae Parker
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In Social Justice High School last week, we read Jane Wong’s “After Preparing the Altar the Ghosts Feasts Feverishly.” We discussed the layered meaning of food, cultures, and how this was reflected in the […]
- BY: Noel Quinones
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There are some realizations you can only come to by reflecting on your past. This is what the 8th graders of Clinton did as we explored our childhoods with the Aimee Nezhukumatathil poem “When […]
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“Writing poetry makes me feel like I can see myself, like I can see my reflection, but not in a mirror, in the world. I write and I know I can be reflected.”
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