Sunday, May 2, 2021

Poets Who Teach Poetry

If you’re a poet, you probably love poetry, right?  I haven’t come across any poets who don’t seem to love it, but I’m not thinking of casual poets, I’m thinking of ones who read and write it all the time.  

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to teach poetry to students in elementary and middle schools.  It is so rewarding!

I taught a class via Zoom last week and it included not only me reading my poems to them but also talking about why I write poetry.  Plus, the kids also had questions for me.

These were very well-thought out questions, too.  For the first time I was asked Who is your favorite poet, What’s your favorite poem, Do you write other things beside poetry, How long have you been writing poetry, How do you get inspired to write, and so on.  Their teacher had obviously done a great job in teaching them various forms of poetry as well as introducing them to mine using a couple of my place poetry books, “Poetry in LA,” and “Poetry in LA, 2” from my Facebook page @poetryinla. These are local area poems for the most part so the kids find them relatable.

It’s so inspiring to me to see how intently they listened when I read and also how the questions they had of me were so they could learn more about poetry.  They were a wonderful audience!

Since I’ve developed my love of poetry, my goal has always been to encourage others to like it, too.  I enjoy writing so I have a variety of poetry books available as well as poems in a wide range of publications.  I feel this way I can reach a lot of folks with my poems.

Teaching poetry is necessary so that it continues to live on.  Poets are some of the best teachers of poetry there can be!









No comments:

Post a Comment

Artemis at Sunset

As this year begins to come to a close, I thought about one of my favorite things to do: watching sunsets.  While I am often up early enough...