Photo by Beata Ratuszniak on Unsplash
Last weekend at the University of Augusta Writing Project conference, I heard best-selling author Jason Reynolds speak about the power of Queen Latifah’s poetry to light a fire in his soul for writing as a teenager. Then last week at the Gateway Center of the Arts , I listened as Kentuckian and US Poet Laureate Ada Limon talked about how poetry keeps us from numbing out.
“Poetry asks people to pay attention.”
Amen.
It was a great week to prepare me for the coming 2023 National Poetry Month. This inspiration fueled my thinking about a way I could offer my students a wide-range of starting points for their own poetry for the next 30 days.
A couple of years ago, I created a Poetry Activity Matrix, which invited students to do the things that poets do, namely write poetry, read poetry, perform poetry, and elevate poetry in their community. If you are a classroom teacher, feel free to copy the doc and modify for your students’ needs.
But this Poetry Prompt Matrix is purely for generating poetry: one poem every day for thirty days. The categories are:
form (any poem that follows a particular set of rules for formation)
type (any poem identified by a particular focus, subject matter, or approach)
abstract nouns
active verbs
body part
memory
Students choose only one of the five offered each day to try. And kudos to that kid - you know the one - who will work all five of the prompts on a given day into a single poem. I have done nothing to magically match any particular form to any particular subject or a memory to a body part across a single row, but the universe has its ways.
Enjoy! And let me know if your students use and like this.
I have used this with story but not poetry. Thank you!
THANK YOU!!!