All posts in Haines

“But as a ghost, watching over you, giving a sign of presence.”: Table Poems

A common household object became the focus of this lesson while studying Joy Harjo’s poem, Perhaps The World Ends Here. The poet James Merrill once commented, ‘we understand history from the family around the […]

“In the hot Summer/Radio ready/ Blue leather walls”: Memory Poems

Students wrote poems about recent and not-so-recent memories and continued working with short lines and sometimes minimalism. Lesson Note: “To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement…Anybody can have […]

“After the glory of the day”: Night Poems

Students doodled and drew pictures of what happens at night before they drift off to sleep and then wrote short poems using sensory details. Lesson Note: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for […]

Cutting Up: Collage and Visual Poetry!

Students used magazines and created cut-up poems! They used ‘found language’ and images to create new meaning. Lesson Note: Creative Artist guru, Julia Cameron, says the part of us that creates art is about […]

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 is formed or an […]

“Portrait of a Grandmother”

Last week with Haines 4th grade after school poetry group, we talked about grandparents. Some of us live far away from our grand parents, some of us see one or both of our grandparents […]

‘I believe you will be deeply touched.’: Video-Inspired Poems

Students watched a bear cam video similar to the one described in the poem we studied, ‘There was this bear cam’ by critic and poet, Sandra Simonds. Sandra Simonds charts the formations and deformations […]

“We Are from the World”

Fresh from spring break, Haines after-school poetry group met for a round table reading of Because You Matter by Tami Charles. From there, we returned to the “Who I Belong To” lesson created around […]

“Let us meet again,”: Poem Revisions

This week, students revised poems about place, meditation, and food that they had worked on earlier in the residency. Lesson Note: “In working on a poem, I love to revise….in the process of revision […]

‘over you over and over and over again’: Repetition Poems

We explored the powerful device of Repetition in Phil Kaye’s poem of the same name. Lesson Note: Writer/Performer Anna Deavere Smith who interviews people and then writes those interviews down verbatim like poetry, insists […]

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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