Gerri Davis

Book Blurb #3

7/17/01

Wendt, Ingrid. Starting With Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the

Classroom.

I was a bit panicked about Ingrid Wendt's poetry workshop before she arrived. Being a writer is a hard enough gig to live up to, but being a poetic?well, that is a very brave and dangerous thing to declare about oneself. Poets are these mystical beings born out of star-dust and smelling like a light fog?these are the cultural connotations of what it means to be a poet. And you have to be musical and magical and creative and profound to be a poet.

And the point of Ingrid's workshop was to teach teachers how to bring poetry into the classroom, to become poets themselves, that we are all poets. Dear God.

Well, the morning turned into a decidedly down-to-earth affair, with clear steps for bringing about certain results with students?strategies for developing metaphors, jump-starting the creative process, ways to build a trusting atmosphere. I was so impressed by what Ingrid said and did in this workshop, that I spent my last $7 on her book. It was money well spent.

Ingrid gives even more great ideas in her book?writing poems in the form of letters, how to teach specific literary devices such as irony and personification. I really like how accessible these exercises are for both teachers to teach and students to learn. I particularly appreciate how easily I could use these exercises not in the context of teaching "Poetry," but as an aide to teaching literature--getting kids to connect with the characters, plot, ideas, setting through poetry so that it becomes more real and interesting and pertinent to them. Maybe we can all be poets after all.