On the Periphery—Thoughts on Teaching and Poetry, and Teaching Poetry
I have been a teacher in many capacities and environments for several years, but sometimes I still feel like a kid who’s just pretending he knows what he’s doing. For years I led canoe trips in the backcountry of Canada—from 5-45 days in length. Our focus was on leadership development, but I always brought along my love of the written word and taught journaling as well. Later, I worked at a public charter school in Minnesota for a couple years, leading poetry seminars, a boat building coarse and a group to Guatemala, among other things. I taught an intro poetry workshop at the University of Washington and assisted with an innovative class called Writers on Writing. Most recently I joined Seattle Arts & Lectures as a Writer-in-Residence. They run the incredibly successful Seattle branch of Writers in the Schools.
My first residency with SAL took me to Children’s Hospital where I worked with patients ranging in age from three to 20 years old. Every day required innovation and improv on the spot. The work was one-on-one and quite unpredictable. Even when the work was challenging—which was always—it was rewarding and because the program was new it was a fine place to learn on the job.
My upcoming residency is going to be more traditional in the sense that I will be teaching poetry to 8th graders in a classroom setting. I’ve worked with 8th graders before, but something about this scenario is even more intimidating than walking into a complete stranger’s hospital room, introducing myself and helping them to write something on the spot.
All this is to say—or ask, I suppose—how does one teach poetry? It may be a familiar question, but for all the talk out there I have never heard a clear answer. Sure, we can teach form, technique, craft and tradition, but poetry remains a mystery even to me, someone who tries to write everyday. My goals are to get kids excited and engaged in the world, to invoke a curiosity and attention that just might offer access into a fresh way of saying the world. I work intentionally, but also intuitionally, which means my methods are under constant revision.
I’m not aiming to become a traditional classroom teacher anytime soon and even when the setting calls for a familiar approach, my experiences (as mentioned above) always lead me to push the boundaries. I guess I work best on the periphery. And, as a working poet, I’m used to being there.
How do YOU think about the teaching of poetry, or any art for that matter? Chime in if you have something to say. Onward.
March 1st, 2010 saat: 3:04 pm
Hi Matthew,
First, congrats and good luck! Eighth graders are — wow — such complex, wonderful, frustrating, endearing, annoying creatures. Will you be teaching primarily a writing class or a reading — or most likely a combination? The Poetry 180 anthology is great for teens, though some of the work is more appropriate for high schoolers. For me as both teacher and writer, poetry is about trying to making sense of the world, and I think kids yearn, for ways to learn how to do that. Get them out of themselves to be in themselves, if that makes sense. Be outside and inside. Read. Read the world. Let them learn to read their world. That the stuff of their world is material for poems. Ask them the question you’re trying to answer — what is a poem anyway? What is poetry? What a great time you’ll have with these embodied awkward beings. Keep us posted!