Listen to me, babie : teaching poetry to children in the Muncie community

Abstract

In 2017, the National Endowment for the Arts reported that only 12 percent of adults read poetry in the last year. From my experience, many people that I’ve spoken to about poetry would describe it as academic, boring, and difficult to understand. In my studies over the past four years, I’ve found that poetry is deeply emotional, constantly surprising, and not afraid to break the rules. In this creative project, I tried to share my love of poetry with a group of students at the Motivate Our Minds after-school program in Muncie, Indiana. Over the course of the semester, we read works from established poets, talked what poetry is and what it can do, and tried to write some of our own pieces. Although difficult at times, the meetings of the poetry club were a rewarding experience, teaching me many things about myself and about how to share my love of poetry with others.