I just finished a really good book, Happily: A Personal History - with Fairy Tales. The author, Sabrina Orah Mark, is a poet too. Poets make my world go round and they always have. It’s why I also call myself a poet. It’s why I write poetry. Why I read poetry. It is why, when I found myself being a third grade teacher, out of passion and not training, despite the hardships of this job, it is why the best time I have had is teaching poetry to these kids.
Poetry has been the voice of my life since I understood words and writing. Poetry has been all that I have wanted to ever do with my career or job or living, though it has never been able to do any of that - it is still my first choice, should it ever start to make me an income. Poetry is in a single word, essential. It is how I express my everything - for my family and my love, for my daughter and my life, for my hopes and my dreams.
World Poetry Day, March 21st, was founded in 1999 by UNESCO, “with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard” makes me think about how everyone should be able to read, write, listen to, hear, access and celebrate poetry not just the big stuff but the little stuff. I usually teach haiku first, because this is the little stuff of poetry and so beautiful, versatile,and engaging. We can do a five-seven-five, as my students called it about nature, about school, about being happy or sad, about a favorite hobby, or, as I have done in the past, about a favorite TV show.
Rhyming poetry is also a good time - it can help with lyrics, music, it can help with vocabulary stretching and building, and it can help make life a fun game for kids and adults. This one, Homework, by Jack Prelutsky, is always a hit with kids and teachers alike!
Free Verse, of course, my first poetry love - the stories being told in ways that sound like my inner voice, and maybe your inner voice - this is harder to teach but it is extremely rewarding. Reading Sylvia Plath, of course, as a teen was life changing. Listening to my beloved Ani Difranco and her epic lyrics and just being the nerdy poetry girl in High School - all of that meant so much to me, even if it did not do much to increase my popularity or ground me in the reality that I was a working class kid who should probably start applying to the factory jobs instead of daydreaming about college.
Free Verse is expressive, liberating, it is deep connection to someone else - know them personally or not - it is feeling seen and feeling heard and seeing and hearing.
World Poetry Day is about using the power of words to connect, uplift, raise awareness and to, somehow and above all, get to World Peace. If we are sharing our inner worlds with each other, if we are expressing and listening to poetic thoughts, we do not have time to focus on divides and disagreements. World Poetry Day is a day of celebration, contemplation, and for me, deep appreciation for all that poetry has given to me, personally and all that it can give to everyone in the hopes and dreams for a better and more peaceful world.
Thank you for reading and for listening, have an amazing World Poetry Day!