Poetry Month

April is poetry month at the IB libraries and we are celebrating.  Students are submitting poems on different topics and some students have created book spine poetry.  Also, this Thursday is a highlight to our poetry month celebration with Poem in Your Pocket Day.  So, anyway, here is a little ditty in celebration:

It is Poetry Month in the library
the doors open and out comes the verse
Thursday is Poem in Your Pocket day
so be ready and rehearse
Bring in your best work to share
be creative and take a risk
the words may seem ordinary
to you
to others they will become works
of art

Book Spine Poetry

Poetry month has come and gone, but not without some great results! One activity our junior high students did was called Book Spine Poetry. I learned about this activity from the Buchlady and her blog post "it's all in the spine!" Students collected books with titles that created a poem. Here are a couple examples.

When Jeff comes home

Al Capone does my shirts

Ask me no questions

without hats, who can tell the good guys?

Baseball

the boys of summer

the games do count

curveball

eagle in flames

ball four

a season on the brink

They all had a lot of fun pulling books off the shelf and creating short 4-8 line poems. One teacher said that it was nice to hear the students talking in the hall the rest of the day about the poems they created with book titles. Me, my aid, and a student volunteer had a lot of fun putting all the books back.

Here is an Original Poem

Rain, rain go away
the Bulls keep winning, so it's okay
the Hawks keep putting the puck in nets
I wish I would have placed some bets
if the Chicago boys of summer would start knocking in some runs
that might just bring out the sun

Happy Poetry Month from
the Cycling Librarian

Poetry Month

Illini Bluffs elementary, middle and high school libraries are celebrating Poetry Month with several activities which will culminate with a large display of student work in both libraries. I am particularly excited to see how the Poetry Video turns out. Students will look at, interpret and read one line from a poem. Then when all lines from a poem are read on video, I will edit the video where the entire poem is being delivered line-by-line by a different student. Hopefully, my editing program and skills will make the poems flow, but also show the different interpretations of each line out of context. I don't know. It'll be great or not so great, but it will be fun. I will post some of the videos right here later this month.