Poetry Friday: Writing about News

Many Poetry Friday bloggers who write for kids are also accomplished poets for adults. Irene Latham is one of those.

Irene blogs at Live Your Poem.

This summer, I have been savoring Irene's book The Color of Lost Rooms. Many of the poems are character sketches and persona poems, spoken in the voice of a character.

Buy a copy!

Putting the focus on a single person is somewhat like writing a focused image poem. The character (or the object, in focused image) represents a larger truth, but is distilled through one person. 

I like this technique for writing poems about current events, particularly when trying to tackle a BIG event -- one that has affected the public consciousness.

If you've ever worked with teen writers, you know that they have a deep desire to write about social issues and events. It's an admirable goal and one we writing teachers should encourage.

However, teens often write about these things from a distance: generic soldiers marching as they hear gunfire, homeless children standing in the street. While these images are real, the media has made them familiar to the point of cliche. How, then, do we write about big events without generalizing?

One solution, write small. Write specific. Don't try to tackle the whole forest fire. Write about one house, one tree.

Take a look at how this works in Irene's simple, yet powerful poem, "After Katrina."

After Katrina

by Irene Latham

She loosens laces, widens mouth

of soggy shoes, then leaves them

to dry on the weathered railing where

they soon sprout pine straw

and a wren darts out -- four pink

eggs hidden just beneath the tongue.

She backs into the house, careful

not to let the screen door slap shut,

and for a heartbeat she is neither

grateful nor resentful, just a woman

pressing her toes into warm linoleum,

pulling apart a piece of day-old bread.

Posted with permission of the author.

Some discussion questions if you read this poem with your students:

• Would you have the same reading experience if this poem were titled, "The Wren?"
• Why did the poet leave Hurricane Katrina out of the poem itself, only referring to that disaster in the title?
• What does the wren symbolize to the woman in the poem?

The focus on one person's moment of normalcy when nothing feels normal gives the poem balance. This is a good lesson for high schoolers in particular, but also for any poet who aims to write about big topics and feels overwhelmed by the task.

If you'd like to read more poetry related to current events, check out the e-zine The New Verse News.

Wishing you a happy Poetry Friday! Thanks to Andi at A Wrung Sponge for hosting today's round up.

Poetry Friday: In the News

Lately, I've been writing poems in response to news stories.

Reading the daily newspaper (The Baltimore Sun, at our house) is a habit I formed in childhood. My father read The New York Times and our local daily, The Bergen Record every day while he ate breakfast.

When a story sticks with me over the course of the day -- whether it's funny, outlandish or gut-wrenching -- I worry at it. My thoughts lick at the news item as if it were a sore tooth. Sometimes, I just write. Other times, I sit with the story for a time before I find my path into the poem.

I am increasingly disturbed at the attacks against civilians, including children, in Syria. A few weeks ago, I heard a news story on NPR about a young protester who was jailed and tortured. The boy is the same age as my teenage son.

The poem I wrote was published at the e-zine, New Verse News. It is an online journal specializing in poetry about current events.

ROBOTICS
by Laura Shovan


They are robotic at fifteen, some boys,
quiet as proverbial church mice. Their motors
skitter discreetly beneath the hum
of the family refrigerator, beneath their mothers’
“how was school” banter, beneath the nagging,
the talk-talk, the “I’ll try anything”
to chase him out of this Tin Man stage,
this heartless construction with its monotone
and monosyllables. Even his angles are jerky.

My son called from Nebraska, at last
back at the Best Western late
from Robotics, where his machine,
concoction of metal, gears,
arm lifting objects in its ingenious elevator,
was not picked for the team. It sat
in its 18 by 18 shipping box,
ignored and folded on itself,
elevator arm tucked away.

And in the morning, driving somewhere --
a distraction from my son’s distance -- the radio.
A boy in Datta, not yet sixteen, no church mouse,
volted into protest, its jolts in his wires,
powering up his voice box. Later,
when he called home from jail, his mother said
his voice had changed, the words almost
unrecognizable. Electric shock will do that.
Still, he said what they all say.
It’s in their wiring. We have programmed them
to say it. Now they are men
and they are fine.

Our host today is Mary Lee at A Year of Reading. Mary Lee is looking for bloggers to host Poetry Friday throughout the summer and into fall. Please contact her to sign up.