Students share poetry
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Squirming, wriggling and fidgeting in line while waiting for their turn at the microphone, a group of Pablo Elementary School students gathered in the gymnasium to share and recite their recently written poetry in front of an audience of family members and classmates.
One youngster mused in a poem about his experience as a wrestler. “The mat smells awful,” he said. “The taste of a wrestling mat is disgusting. It tasted like sweat. I hear my coach yelling at me.”
Thursday’s poetry reading was the culmination of a writing workshop hosted by The Missoula Writing 0Collaborative where more than thirty creative students from fourth-grade classes spent the last two and a half months meeting once a week to learn and develop their poetic skills.
The students shared poems about their feelings, the world around them, baking a cake and their personal experiences. One poet shared the personal pain of losing a pet and asked the question: “Do you like living in heaven?” Others wrote about their homes and families.
“I was born bald,” read one rhymester. “I was born to be a kind person. I was born to love ice cream.”
Another wordsmith explained some of her unusual sleeping locations: “I sleep everywhere … in my bed, on the floor, on a couch, on the kitchen chair, in a tent outside.”
Caroline Keys, who was the Missoula Writing Collaborative writer-in-residence for Pablo Elementary this season, opened the event expressing her excitement for the poetry being shared.
“It has been such a phenomenal experience to watch these kids share their poetry,” Keys said. “They’re all so talented and deserve to share.”
Keys also explained the purpose and significance of the program. The Missoula Writing Collaborative started Writers in the Schools to spark student interest in writing and to improve reading skills through the process of writing. The program engages students in the storytelling process by instructing students on how to incorporate detail and descriptive language in their writing.
While most students had no hesitation jumping behind the mic to read their poems, a few needed a gentle nudge of encouragement from Keys. One poet quietly read her poem with Keys. Once done, her classmates broke out in applause of support. Of her eight years teaching poetry, Keys said: “The thing most astonishing to me is the support the kids show each other.”
She continued: “This is the first year I have worked with students here at Pablo Elementary. I have enjoyed connecting with these kids and helping them find their voices and telling their own stories at such a young age. I think their stories are really important.”
The student poets will reconvene one more time to go through and choose their best poems for submission to a national poetry contest.
