Poem sketching

Because of the testing schedule, I purposefully scheduled a "play" day for my sophomores, and I'm glad I did. By the time I had them in class today, I'm sure their brains were fried. They simply needed a chance to play with poetry (our current unit) rather than analyze it.

Since I don't know much about various forms of poetry or ways of "playing" with it, I asked a colleague (a creative writing teacher) for some ideas. Though I had heard of poem sketching (a technique devised by Sandy Lyne), I had never actually employed it in any of my classes. I was truly impressed by the poems that my students wrote. Truly.

Poem sketching involves taking a set of four words and combining them into sentences that look and "feel" like poetry. There are a few guidelines (re-combine word groups if desired; change the forms of the words; write three or more sentences; don't rhyme) but they really work to free up the poet rather than constrain him.

Students wrote poems about high school romances, a soldier's sacrifice, and childhood memories. If only I had collected them, I would have included some here.

Since they were having so much fun, I thought I'd join them. Looking at the list, I chose the word group of "sleeve, hut, bowl, tears". And here is my poem sketch:

She sits cross-legged in her hut,
a bowl in her lap.
Cornmeal clings to her fingers,
caking them,
but she's indifferent to the mess.
The tears quietly slip down her cheeks,
dripping into the shima,
until she wipes them away with her sleeve.

A poem sketch doesn't have to be perfect or polished; it's a sketch, a work in progress. The idea is to create an image using language rather than ink to capture the moment. The beauty is that the poet isn't limited to one image based on a particular group of words; each sketch is different, a personal reflection of the poet.