April is Poetry Month

April is one of my favorite month of the year, partly because April is National Poetry Month! Here is some information from the Canadian League of Poets about the month.

If you are an educator looking to bring poetry into your classroom (now or anytime), I recommend the Poetry Society’s resources for teachers, including lesson plans that incorporate award-winning poetry by young poets, and the Young Poets Network, an online platform for young poets up to the age of 25 with articles, challenges, prompts, advice, and more.

If you are looking for books to help you integrate poetry into your classroom, try the Spoken Word Workbook, edited by Sheri-D Wilson, or Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft by Jane Burroway.

Two other great resources are this post from 2016, “4 Reasons to Start-Class With a Poem Each Day,” and this guide on one teacher’s implementation of starting class with a poem: “A Poem a Day: 30 Poems for Secondary Students.”

Here are some tips on how to take poetry beyond April!

Read a poem in your sudden downtime

Use your phone or tablet as a means of filling unexpected free time with poetry: you can borrow eBooks from the library and read just one poem at a time, or you could find an online literary magazine that will have regular new content for you to explore! The Puritan, Minola Review, CV2, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Plenitude are just a few great Canadian literary magazines that have online poetry content. You can even take it a step further and share the poems you like on your own social media!

Take it down a notch: try chapbooks, instead of books

Chapbooks are a perfect way of settling into poetry when you have some free time on your day off, but not enough time to really get into a full book. Chapbooks are smaller collections of writing, usually between 10 and 25 pages, that allow writers to explore and experiment with their writing in new and exciting ways. As an added bonus, there are many artisan chapbooks presses out there producing not just beautiful poetry, but aesthetically beautiful books, with hand-sewn pages and high-quality paper to complement the work within! Check out Anstruther Press, Desert Pets Press, above/ground, words(on)pages, or Puddles of Sky Press–just a few of the great active chapbook presses publishing in Canada right now–to get your chapbook collection started!

Take a break or cleanse your palette with poetry

It can feel overwhelming to try to read a book of poetry or an entire issue of a literary magazine, but don’t forget that poems themselves are often bite-sized! You can always use five minutes to read a single poem once, just to redirect your mental efforts for a moment. It’s suggested you should get up to stretch and move around throughout the day to keep your body happy–so why not keep your mind happy with a little poetry stretch every now and then, too? 

A poem on Ageing from http://www.dennydavis.net/poemfiles/aging2b.htm

My forgetter's getting better
But my rememberer is broke
To you, that may seem funny
But, to me, that is no joke.

For when I'm 'here' I'm wondering
If I really should be 'there'
And, when I try to think it through,
I haven't got a prayer!

Often times I walk into a room,
Say "what am I here for?"
I wrack my brain, but all in vain
A zero is my score.

At times I put something away
Where it is safe, but, Gee!
The person it is safest from
Is, generally, me!

When shopping I may see someone,
Say "Hi" and have a chat,
Then, when the person walks away
I ask myself, "who was that?"

Yes, my forgetter's getting better
While my rememberer is broke,
And it's driving me plumb crazy
And that isn't any joke.

P.S. Send this to everyone you know because I don't remember who sent it to me! (noted Denny)