All posts in Poems

Household Names

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 […]

Hyde Park Is Calling

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 […]

In the Black: Blackout Poetry

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. […]

Blue is everything good – Color Poems

​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 […]

‘jellyfish, sharks, and sea anemone’: Aimee Nezhukumatahil Imitation Poems

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 […]

A List for the Future

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 […]

Conversational Poetry

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 […]

Jealous clouds, guitars, and more

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 […]

Snow Ball Poems

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 […]

Spring Break is only a week and gone in a flash.

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 […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET