Still wondering what you might do at your school, library, community center, church, or home for National Poetry Month? Ever had a Poetry Hunt?
The idea is this: Post poems --with a little info about the poets-- around your building and then make a list of clues that lead from one to the next. Create a form for participants to fill in the names of the poems and poets as they find them.
For instance, an elementary school Poetry Hunt could begin with:
* Take twenty steps and look to your right to find a poem about a fish with no bones (
About the Teeth of Sharks by John Ciardi)
* Back up three yards and you will find a poem about a creature with whiskers (
Midnight Stray by Rebecca Kai Dotlich)
* Take ten steps diagonally and find a poem written by a poet who was born in 1909 (
W by James Reeves)
* Go around the corner and look for the water fountain, where you will find a weather poem (
Sunflakes by Frank Asch)
* Go up the stairs. Outside the doorway, find a poem by a woman who was born in Baltimore, Maryland (
A Little Song of Life by Lizette Woodworth Reese)
* Turn around and look for the poem by a Newbery award winner (
Wish by Linda Sue Park)
You could have the poems match the location in the school. For example, you could have music-related poetry near the music classroom:
* Find a song that was written on the occasion of President Lincoln's birthday (
Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson -- I would only include the first verse)
* Find a poem that was written in a sidewalk (
Meadowlark Mending Song by Margaret Hasse -- maybe you could include a little image of the sidewalk, from the Web)
Near the library:
* Find a poem written by a poet who lived to be 99 (
Books Fall Open by David McCord)
* Find a poem by the author of
The Monsterologist (
A Scarcity of Words by Bobbi Katz)
* Find a poem by a poet who likes to raise tadpoles (
School Librarian by Kristine O’Connell George)
Outside an English classroom:
* Find a poem written by a Canadian poet (
Call the periods Call the commas by Kalli Dakos)
* Find a poem written by a poet who speaks four languages (
The Unwritten by W.S. Merwin)
Near the gym:
* Find a poem written by the poet who wrote the shortest poem in the world (
Shortstop by Charles Ghigna)
Maybe
Things I Don't Eat by Mr. Chompchomp could be by the cafeteria, or
As I was walking up the stair by Hughes Mearns could be by the stairs. There are lots of things you could do!
Gathering Books is our Poetry Friday round-up host today. P.S. Last week I had a request for more poems from
Against Forgetting.
Here's one, but I'm warning you, it's heartbreaking. (It's the third one down,
A Conversation Through The Door). I noticed that this particular poem is the subject of a plethora of essays for cheaters (i.e. unethical writers write papers which they sell to disgusting companies who sell them to dishonorable students.) Ugh.
The Guardian's Lisa Allardice asks an interesting question -- if literary time travel was a possibility, what writers would you go see? 
