Writing Poetry With My Students

It has been a long and inward Winter term.

I have met three times a week for ten weeks to write poetry with my students. For their Final Exam, we had a two hour writing marathon. I had writing prompts on slips of paper that we drew.

Then everyone went alone to write, getting back together to read, respond, and discuss our poems.

We wrote for the first hour outside the longhouse and for the second hour outside the theatre under the cherry blossoms.

37 thoughts on “Writing Poetry With My Students

  1. Lloyd A. Meeker says:

    Beautiful poem, Sandy — thanks!

    It has been a particularly inward winter, hasn’t it? And now that Merc retrograde has stopped insisting on revisiting and re-focusing, I feel a tide moving outward, carrying me into spring. What a relief!

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  2. Cheryl Renee says:

    This is a beautiful little poem,it is especially meaningful to me with the owl images. It is a transition poem, bridging winter and spring flawlessly. Your students are lucky to have you as an instructor; I want to paint under cherry blossoms.

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  3. gloria says:

    I think we all met on that strip of sand/land/sphere of life…As always, the blossoms of life appear as winter follows Spring. Thank you Ms Sandy!

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  4. Cyndi Vander Ven says:

    A long, dark winter followed by that cleansing marathon and birthed into Spring through the haunting, soaring owl imagery. A lovely coming of agelessness.

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  5. Sarah says:

    I love the images in this story, so vivid and imaginative.
    Wonderful writing prompt, we are always changing and growing. Someday you will become your blue-eyed owl.

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  6. Kirissa says:

    “Read, respond, and discuss.” This stuck out, and I thought to myself, “What a creative idea it is to take students outside of the classroom walls and just let them write, with guidelines of course. A two hour “marathon” spent diving into a poetry writing prompt. I can just imagine the creativity flowing through ones minds as the outsides influences of nature take over.”

    For your own writing topic, I found it to be an interesting choice. You use the word moodiness, and I recognize its association to winter. A poem about growing older and how you

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