Hello All...
I know that there are 10,000,000 things going on right now, but April is Poetry Month and I found this really excellent passage. I am sharing it with your students...and thought I would pass it along to you...
Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.
I've been playing with words and shaping poems in the pages of my journal since I was fourteen. Often it seems I just catch my heart and mind's dictation and take notes. Other times I let a tree, a pearl ring, a sign along the highway speak to me. I've learned that in a safe, free setting anyone of any age can gather words, play with language and write poems.
It's impossible to teach anyone to write a poem. But we can set up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen. We can create a field in and around us that's fertile territory for poems. Playing with words, we can get to the place where poems come from. We can write and make discoveries about who we are and who we might become whether or not we truly commit ourselves to becoming poets.
Buy yourself a notebook/journal that suits your personality and keep it with you. In a journal you can be self-centered and feel safe enough to write poems. It's never too late to start. Don't try to catch up by going back in your life. Start with now. Begin now, even if you don't have a notebook yet. Scribble. Go for a walk and as you wander, take notes. Jot words anywhere.
The opening entry in my diary at fifteen reads, "Dedicated to me."
From poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Woolridge
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