Sunday, April 1, 2012

Picturing Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration of verse initiated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.

Last year, inspired by friend and professional colleague Buffy Hamilton, I created a SlideShare that linked poems and images, using both my own photographs and some found via a Creative Commons search.

In 2012, I challenged myself to use only images I had captured to illustrate the words of poets - and to provide one slide for each day of April. While the finished product may lack some of the visual impact of last year's effort, it provided me with even more personal satisfaction.

Picturing poetry
View more presentations from Diane Cordell


There are many ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in the library and classroom. April 26 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Last year I Skyped with students in a number of states, sharing a favorite poem and listening to the children read their own choices.

This year, I've already read about an interesting Poem in Your Pocket Day activity from Cathy Jo Nelson:

"All the 'pockets' have poems ready to be had, and the pockets also have a qr code to poems from poets.org so kids can save them to their smart-phones as an option."

...and I'm sure that John Schumacher and Shannon Miller, of Two Libraries, One Voice, will have some wonderful, interactive celebration planned, as they did last year.

Some useful resources for educators include
In her essay, Why We Should Read Poetry, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Amy Lowell called poetry "the height and quintessence of emotion, of every sort of emotion" She concluded,
"We should read Poetry because only in that way can we know man in all his moods - in the most beautiful thoughts of his heart, in his farthest reaches of imagination in the tenderness of his love, in the nakedness and awe of his soul confronted with the terror and wonder of the Universe. Poetry and history are the textbooks to the heart of man, and poetry is at once the most intimate and the most enduring."
So share a poem, write a poem, illustrate a poem, memorize a poem, recite a poem. The possibilities are endless and rewarding.


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2 comments:

Cathy Jo Nelson said...

Thanks for including my activity in this informative, inspiring, and DELIGHTFUL post. Your work is fabulous sweetie!!

diane said...

Thanks, Cathy! I love your use of QR codes. They would seem to have such potential but I rarely see people "reading" them outside of an educational setting.