Billy Collins | litcoachlady

For the month of March I have been participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I shared a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I hope you’ve found some that have sparked your joy of writing this month!

With National Poetry month on our doorstep I think its a great time to collect some ideas for playful engagement with poetry. I love to revisit Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry” to ground my teaching in the purpose for poetry-to illuminate dark thoughts, to play with the richness of our language, to whittle a narrative down to the essence of thought, feeling, and senses, and to explore the human experience. Here’s an interesting video interpretation of his classic poem.

Poem-ish Sparks!

I’ve been inspired by so many slicers this month who have shared poems and poetry ideas. (I list some of their offerings at the end of this post) I often use the term poem-ish to describe what I quick write, not because it isn’t in some authentic way a poem, but because it hasn’t yet been read with a careful ear and revised with the respectful revision I think it one day deserves. It remains in a poem-ish state, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. And that’s ok.

One form I have seen a lot this month has been the “skinny poem”. I love this because I can consume a poem at a glance and savor it in one bite. I think it is less intimidating for kids to try out, and it works well as a quick write! Here’s my skinny poem quick write about the sunset I soaked up from my back deck last night.

Thanks to everyone who shared resources this month. If you have some collections or caches of poetry ideas you have shared that I missed or that you would like to share, please let me know in the comments section. I am so grateful this writing community! Here are a few: