In response to a lack of source works for wide-ranging approaches to teaching poetry, award-winning poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson has gathered ninety-nine micro-essays for poets, critics, and scholars who teach and for students who wish to learn about the many ways poets think about how a poem comes alive from within-and beyond-a classroom. Not narrowly concerned with how to read poetry or how to write poetry, by virtue of their central concern with teaching poetry, the essays in this fresh and innovative volume address both reading and writing and give teachers and students useful tools for the classroom and beyond. Divided into four sections- Reflections - Poetics,
Exercises - Praxis,
New Approaches to Poetry Courses and Methodology, and Talks - Directives -Poets on Teaching provides practical, intelligent advice. Reflections - Poetics encompasses the most expansive approaches to teaching poetry, where poets reflect variously on what teachers can cultivate in their classrooms. Exercises - Praxis consists of hands-on approaches to reading and, especially, writing poems. New Approaches to Poetry Courses and Methodology features essays on rethinking specific courses, offering new ideas for course design and pedagogy. Talks - Directives contains a series of more informal and conversational discussions geared toward becoming a stronger reader, writer, teacher, and student of poetry. “Poets on Teaching’ encompasses the most expansive approaches to teaching poetry, where poets reflect variously on what teachers can bring to and cultivate in their classrooms. As Sarah Gridley writes,
The best class will be weirded out-punctured-made eccentric- by the creeping, crawling, flashing, or thundering in of something that is not in the classroom.
Exciting and vibrant, this book will be required reading for new and experienced teachers alike.
