Last week was fun and led to an unexpected change of events. We had a new student stop by, who shared that she wasn’t the biggest poetry fan because the form feels too serious sometimes. Together, we watched two performances that are some of my favorite instances of people bringing humor into poetry. After watching “Childhood” and “I-M-A-N-I,” our conversation pretty quickly turned into one about the story behind our names. The two wins of the day? First, the student who wasn’t a big poetry fan left our session really liking the poems we watched. Second, students wrote some great poems based on the prompt “tell a story about your name.” Check out one of the poems below.
Name It On Me
by Jew El’ W.
Name it Jewel, Jewell with two Ls of course
Jewel without the EL, capitalized
that is
Name it on Juju
Marqez
Juicy Mens
Jutanna
Boogish as I pick your
filthy name calling out the
nostalgic air
Name it, Name it, as I
scream like a little mouse
making no scene.
Name it Jew El’, doesn’t matter
where you put the apostrophe
– Name, – Lame
