Hello my Omschooligans! Today we're turning the Omschool into the Poemschool! I'm going to share creative writing lesson plans to use in a poetry writers workshop. Poetry activities include games, writing prompts and snack recipes (must have food!) I have a creative writing blog The Writers Garden, with poems I've written over the years. You can stop by and visit if you wish. These poetry activities are based on my own writing style. Target age group for lesson plans is probably 13 to 17.
Preparing the Writer's Workshop Space
Context matters when writing poetry. By that I mean, the environment must be conducive to contemplative thought. Here are some elements I include when I write poetry.
- Serene Workspace: Set the stage to get creative juices flowing by surrounding yourself with comforting and cozy spaces. Consider all your five senses as poetry writing is essentially a sensory activity.
- Outdoors: if you're writing in an outdoor area, such as in nature poem writing, find a spot to situate yourself comfortably. A bench in the woods or a blanket at the beach are preferred places for me. Bring a journal and pen.
- Indoors: Pay attention to sensory details.
- Comfortable chair or sitting area. I love making a pillow pile to write on.
- Decor: I need a lot of color in my environment. I mix, or contrast, rather than match patterns and colors. I like to juxtapose odd little ornaments or found items in my scheme.
- Smell: diffuse a wood essential oil.
- Sound: Playing meditative music or a sound machine helps ease your mind into a restful and imaginative space. It's there's a thunderstorm, all the better. My preferred sounds are
- rain and thunder
- Orthodox or Gregorian chant
- Tibetan singing bowls (follow @WaterSongSingingBowls on Youtube) This is absolute gestalt serenity.
- Taste: Healthy snacks and beverages: Creative writing is a mental workout and as with a physical workout, proper nutrition and hydration are essential.
- Umami flavor bombs: one of my go-to snacks when writing poetry is a simple concoction that combines sweet, savory, creamy and crunchy.
- goat cheese stuffed dates with walnuts. Slit dates, add a dollop of goat cheese and a walnut piece.
- Quest Protein Chips (taco flavor)
- Belgiosio Parmesan cubes, Babybel cheese rounds or Laughing Cow cheese wedges.
- Homemade Hummus (here's my recipe) and baby cucumbers, mini peppers and grape tomatoes.
- Protein Pinwheels: Spread homemade hummus on a low carb high protein tortilla or wrap (I love the red hummus ones from Aldi). Add spinach, spring mix or arugula lettuce, tomato slices and red onion of desired. You can also include a slice of deli turkey breast and or cheese slice. Roll and slice into pinwheels.
Poetry Writing Guidelines (and that's all they are, suggestions)
One rule to know about poetry is that there are no rules, unless you choose to follow a specific rubric. My advice is to let the poem lead. Yes, poems take on lives of their own. I can't explain why or how.
- The Rhyming Metered Discipline: My poems tend to be lyrical quatrain, with four-line verses (stanzas) of 5 syllable per line and the second and the fourth rhyming. They tend to read like ballads or songs. That discipline works for me. But it is pretty tight. And sometimes, sounds forced.
- The Riff or Narrative Poem: When I find that a poem has turned into a story or stream of conscience reflection, the poem seems to work best with longer unlined rhymes. This one Tarmac Where my Wintergreen Berries Lived. As I wrote that, it felt best to forego the quatrain constraints. Some verses had four and others five. It's not exactly free verse but it is more unfettered "riffing."
- Modified Sonnet. Don't sacrifice word choices to fit a poetry frame that isn't working. In Swing Like You're Five and It's Your Birthday, I kept the four lines and 2-4 rhyming but extended some because I couldn't express my idea in fewer syllables without sounding silly.
- Passion Poem: In some poems that are very fraught and intense, I will throw off the entire thing purposely with a longer unrhymed "ringer" phrase. I do this to startle the reader and highlight its importance.
Stylistic Choices for Poems
- Volta: My poems have a habit of shifting gears. So I use a Volta Signal that I sometimes call "cue the sexy kazoo key change. My readers know that when this happens, we're about to go rogue. I wrote Panic Attack Ack-Ack in the middle of a full-blown panic attack (poetry is excellent anxiety therapy). After a few verses "belting out" my suffering, I began to feel calmer and the poem steered to a safer shore.
- Coda (Apotheosis). I call this the Great Amen or the Takeaway. It's the resolving chord that elevates the poem to a higher plane. I tend to do this more than I'd like because many of my poems are dark and I feel obliged to end on a positive note. Frankly, I'm not a fan of this type as it feels like compromising the poem's integrity. I also don't want to proselytize.
- Peripeteia: In Bombazine Becomes Electra I did a complete about face towards the end. the poem began funereal Gothic macabre. And then as happens, it changed its mind and went into this zany space.
- Recurring themes and memes: As you write more, you'll find certain ideas cropping up repeatedly. For me they are
- Lake Michigan
- Trains
- the Moon
- Alaska and the Chillkoot (Chilkat Nattering)
- the color gray
- Homelessness
- Dune woods
- My grandparents (Sitting Shiva By Our Lake)
- Childhood trauma
- Imprisonment and salvation
- Youth, inner child, children
- Reparsed images: To express these, you develop a set of images or phrases that show up in poems only in different contexts.
- "Gin and printer's ink"
- Mary-go-round (spelled like my name intentionally)
- Writing words as certain kinds of tea
- The Lady of Shalott (Lady of Shalott Blues in B Flat)
- The Cliff-Hanger: I'm practicing a more open-ended approach which feels more authentic. If I'm writing in a dark place, then let it be so. A poem is not a TV show that resolves crisis in 24 minutes. In "That's What I Get for Going Where My Heart Led" I purposely ended in stalemate "hostage situation" that took me several more poems to find any conclusion.
- Statement Poem. I refuse to JADE (justify, argue, defend or excuse) my writing. I will try to answer questions if asked where this was coming from, but I offer no rationale or apology. I will not back down. No matter how dark they are. If they're harsh or crude, well, that's where I was. I've said before, I stand by my poems because they've always stood by me. I wrote "Going Where Only Amydala Knows" about some very disturbing experiences. Some of my poems are "PG-13." And if they're going to have any healing effect, they need to be blunt.
Poetry Challenges, Writing Prompts and Activities
- Sound Byte Challenge: Poets are often asked where they get ideas from. I have developed a style in which I pick two or three words that are really speaking to me. Or that I just like the sound of. I wrote "I'll Take You With Me, Jesus" simply to use the words Eau de Nile, crimplene and Cetirizine. Bombazine made it in there too. For this poetry challenge, pick one word and go with it, or teachers, assign a unique word to use. Here are some to use
- metamorphosis
- rendevous
- quixotic
- Onomatopoeia challenge: Compose a poem similar to Edgar Allen Poe "The Bells" that spells out sounds. This type of poem focuses more on sounds that meanings of words. Of Sounds and Lightning Bugs or Fireflies.
- Imagery Challenge: Poetry lives in imagery, creating pictures with words. In this challenge, select a object or real image and describe it as fully as possible. Try to avoid cliche words and find new words for green (for example) and new ways to describe a tree. In "When the Wind's in the Wendigo" I painted a picture of what depression felt like.
- Metaphor Challenge: In this challenge, we compare abstract ideas, constructs and concepts to animate objects or ideas. But again we avoid stereotyped comparisons and look for unusual connections. In "Trauma Bond Seance" I compare the nightmares and dreams I have about grieving loved ones, to a seance.
- Bombastic Hook Verse : In this poetry writing challenge, the first verse starts with a bang, using lot of sound byte words. This is to snag the reader's attention. Then the proceeding verses move on to the gist of the poem. They may or may not refer back to the first verse. In "Narnian Reverie: Or Moishe Requires His Tea" I actually used the word bombastic in the first verse which had nothing to do with the rest of the poem.
- Music Challenge. Song lyrics are just poems set to music. Many of my poems contain references to song lyrics, repurposed to express my ideas. Select snippets of songs and weave them into your poem. Avoid plagiarizing by rewording or only use small pieces.
- Three Word Volta Challenge: I've been honing a poetry device in which I compose a three-word phrases with a keyword in the middle and a word on either side that takes the keyword in opposite direction. Like "Beer Tent Revival." Beer tent has a very different connotation from the religious tent revival. But they are both noisy. Another one is "cat-phishing" which is just two words but spelling fishing like phishing implies scamming and catfishing is another type of scam. But catfish itself can just mean a type of fish.
- Rorschach Challenge: In this challenge, writers read each other's poems and then describe how they personally interacted with it. Ask questions like "what does this say to me?" What resonates and what do I take away from it.
- Ekphrastic Challenge: Present a work of art for students to reflect on and express meaning in words. Here's my example. Pompeiian Reverb.
- Letter to your younger self. Here's one I wrote to my inner child. Lisping in Way Back Rhyme.
- Nonsense Poem Challenge: Pick subject and reimagine it. In Bargain Basement Dynasty I reinvented an Ancient Egyptian goddess as a rebellious teen queen dealing with budget cuts.
