Poetry Workshops

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship 

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Poetry writing and presentation workshops with Anna:

Students’ comments about what they liked about the poetry workshop:

  • Now when I want to write a poem I’ll listen to song and see what I can think of “personification,” and sensory details.
  • Thinking about objects and if they were alive how they would feel. Also looking at other people’s perspectives.
  • It was really useful to know that comparisons between two ideas or things can create many ideas for a poem.
  • Looking at landscapes, and her talking about them helped. I could start writing my own ideas with her experience.
  • She helped me to be more descriptive and deep in my poems.
  • I liked the class when we learned about line breaks and how it sounds different if you put a word on a different line.
  • I liked writing with inspiration in music.
  • To really think deeply about the tiniest and biggest and most extraordinary things that you can write about, and really use the right words to express these images and feelings.
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Example Student Writing From the Workshop

THE BEST HORSEBACK RIDER

The best horse back rider
is in my heart,
She wants to ride all day long and restlessly jump over hurdles,
to majestically ride in the light of the sunset,
to feel the warmness of the pony’s soft fur.
but she is getting older.
The ponies are getting too small and the stirrups too short,
I worry that she will never feel the warm sunshine or the the wind going though her hair
when she jumps again,
that no matter how hard she tries she will never have the feeling of her aching legs after
a long ride again
and that she will never
get to ride
again.

–Josephine

 

SUNSET

I met sunset.
Her eyes were pink like cotton candy.
She wore a loose lavender dress.
She ran off, her steps light and graceful
I followed.

Up and down the hills she went
laughing, not a care in the world.
On top of a hill she stopped
and greeted Night.
Hand in hand they walked off.
She looked back and smiled,
Fleeting and beautiful
like sunset.

–Edith