- 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: Poetry Center
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Let’s make it 50 for 50! With Your Support We Can Fund 50 Residences Next Year As we head towards the end of the calendar year and launch our annual campaign, the Chicago Poetry […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For our 10th poetry session, the theme was questions. Why do people ask questions? Does every question have to have an answer? The O-School students gave great responses to these questions. Most students mentioned […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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We introduced ourselves to each other by reading acrostic poems we wrote about ourselves. How would you introduce yourself in an acrostic poem? Can you find our names written within our poems? _______________________ The […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students participated in a short meditation and breathing exercise. I read I Close My Eyes by David Ignatow. After the meditation, they were asked to write whatever came to mind. Classwork was conducted in […]
- BY: Josie Levin
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This week we took a look at some examples of erasure poetry. Students saw many different forms, using the page they were given for their own poems to make a variety of poems with […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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We wrote Acrostic poems to introduce ourselves and some of what we like. What would you add to an Acrostic poem about yourself; can you read our names within our poem? We will soon […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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¡Estos son nuestros poemas sobre la música! ¡Y pensamos que la voz también es un instrumento! These are our poems about music! And we think the voice is an instrument too! ____________ No Music […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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We read Poem for the Tin-tun-teros, by Brenda Cárdenas, and we talked about a poem called an Ode: this is a poem you write for or about someone or something special. Here are our […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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Leímos el poema, fresca, escrito por Nayyiryh Waheed y nos da la inspiración de pensar en lo que pasará. Entonces, estamos pensando en este año y en lo que podría ser. Primero respondimos preguntas […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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We are thinking about similes and practicing writing them. Here are some of our similes and soon we will share poems that we’ve written inspired by them! Estamos pensando sobre símil y practicando escribiendo […]
- BY: Maya Odim
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¡Nos divertimos mucho practicando la escritura de poemas con descripción y detalles cuando escribimos estos poemas! Pensábamos en el juego de ‘Veo Veo…’ y pensábamos en maneras de usar nuestras palabras para describir y […]
- BY: Cai Sherley
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This week was all about personas at Lawndale. After an enthusiastic game of “What’s My Name?” we read “Being A Bag” by Washington Elementary’s Asano L, and got to work. Please enjoy! Ms. Barker […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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For the 11th session with Waters 6th graders, we looked at letter poems, also known as epistolary poems. Students thought about figures they would talk to if they could (living or dead, fictional or […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Why do we give instructions and whom do we give them to? These are the questions that anchored this 11th week with Waters 7th graders. We read Dana Levin’s “Instructions for Stopping” and tried […]
- BY: Cai Sherley
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Black History Month is a time for celebration and reflection, and this past Thursday, Hyde Park High’s poets celebrated their own Blackness. Called on by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Primer for Blacks,” the poets took to […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students wrote “Abecedarian” poems that use the entire alphabet as the lefthand spine of the poem. Lesson Note: Abecedarian poetry offers a structured framework to explore complex ideas. It allows the poet to navigate […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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Swift 2nd graders pondered this question, and then came up with responses such as “It would be boring,” “It would be sad,” and “Artists wouldn’t be able to have any fun!” In Ms. Pendola’s […]
- BY: Poetry Center
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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 March featured readers are Sarah Ghazal Ali and R.A. Villanueva. […]
- BY: Russell Price
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To celebrate Valentine’s Day, the young viking writers read Frank O’Hara’s “Animals” and Richard Brautigan’s “A Boat” and “Catfish Friend.” They were then tasked with writing a love poem to an unexpected object of […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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Valentines Day landed on my most recent sessions with Swift 2nd graders, so we read Eloise Greenfield’s poem, “Honey, I Love.” Students enjoyed lines in which the poet said she LOVED “a flying pool” […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Poetry and collage aren’t so far removed! Water’s 7th graders explored the intersection of the two by looking at examples from artists like Krista Franklin and Marcus Dawson. Then students created their own collage […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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For our most recent session with Waters 6th graders, we delved into erasure poems, also known as blackout poems. After looking at a variety of examples, each student received an excerpt from Sandra Cisneros’ […]
- BY: Josie Levin
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This week Water’s 6th and 7th graders in Ms. Smallwood and Ms. Hernandez’ classes read “Thank you Letter (with footnotes)” by John Grandits. In class we discussed creating double meanings in our writing and […]
- BY: Joy Young
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The Chicago Poetry Center is now in its 8th year as Chicagoland Regional Host Organization for the national youth poetry competition, Poetry Out Loud. Poetry Out Loud is a collaborative project of the Illinois […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students wrote “Abecedarian” poems that use the entire alphabet as the lefthand spine of the poem. Lesson Note: “My essential poetics is simply to be doing something, making something, playing, struggling, learning something – […]
- BY: Madison Mae Parker
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In Mrs. Siciliano’s 7th+8th grade class, we looked at “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay. Through the exploration of similes and metaphors, we learned about holding the complexity of things being both […]
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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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