Writing a poem as a group exercise

Hello Friends, I am going to post some poetry exercises on this blog leading up to your work on the writing contest through APEC.   This one is one you can work on with your whole class.

For this exercise, each student should bring in an object with an interesting history.  All students should have an interesting object they can talk life into and which might interest and inspire other students in the class. Each student presents his or her object and the objects are passed around while the student explains the object.  (If your class is too large, you can do this in smaller groups).
Once the storytelling is over, the students make a poem using the objects in the manner and order they choose. One way to do this is to write lists that combine the names of the objects with something about them.

This exercise helps students with oral language skills as well and is a wonderful way for students to get to know something about each other and build community in the class.


A variation of this kind of exercise might be to do a simple list poem.  A student can propose a category such as "Things Found in my Backyard."  "Things I want to do Tomorrow," "Things I Regret,"  "Things in your pocket (or purse, or wallet)" Each student makes a list of as many things as they can think of.  Here is an example poem with a list of things found in pockets:

SONG FOR THE POCKETS by Gary Soto

They carry the spoon that unearthed another tin spoon,

A magnet furred in iron filings,

A shag of lint.

They carry fiddle-neck and arrow-face foxtail,

Aa harmonica grinning with rust.

 The salt that forgot the palm it was rubbed from.

They carry the key whose door was burned,

A rattle of seeds capsuled in foil—

All that was lost in the street raised by its own rules.

Here is a simpler example:

What Bugs Me

When my teacher tells me to write a poem tonight.
When my mother tells me to clean up my room.
When my sister practices her violin while I'm watching TV.
When my father tells me to turn off the TV and do my homework.
When my brother picks a fight with me and I have to go to bed early.
When my teacher asks me to get up in front of the class and read the poem I
wrote on the school bus this morning.