As mentioned in a previous post, Teachers & Writers Collaborative demonstrates an on-going committment to germinating lifelong readers of poetry. Their website hosts some valuable forums for teachers:
WRITERS ON TEACHING: Professional writers and educators share their techniques for teaching imaginative writing and review books on writing pedagogy and related subjects. This month, Tara Tandlich explains step by step how to teach young kids to write poems about the night, and Sarah Fay McCarthy reviews The Triggering Town, by Richard Hugo.
FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING: Matthew Sharpe interviews fiction writers on their novels and stories, their working methods and philosophies, their lives in the arts, and their insights into writing pedagogy. This month, Lydia Davis talks to Sharpe about her new translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way and her own experiments with narrative form.
POETS ON POETRY: Daniel Kane interviews poets about their poems, their poetics, and their ideas on how to teach poetry to students in grades K-12. This month, Harryette Mullen discusses Oulipo word games, the relationship between racial identity and innovative form, and a whole lot more.
STUDENT POEM OF THE MONTH: New poems every month written by students from around the country in grades K through 12.
CONTACTS: A list of organizations helpful to writers and teachers interested in teaching creative writing.
VIRTUAL POETRY WORKSHOP: See how a poetry workshop unfolds on-line. Teachers & Writers Collaborative is proud to feature the fifth on-line workshop led by poet Hoa Nguyen of Austin, Texas. Sixteen student writers from around the country are participating this time around. Adapt Hoa's writing exercises for your own students, and learn how to critique student poetry by reading Hoa's responses on the forum page.
Now why the hell does not every K-12 teacher who dares to read poetry and who dares to teach it not know about this site? Creating readers, methinks, is more a distribution than a political problem. How to get the particular spark into the mind of the particular reader? The drought's long been upon us.