Local Poetry Contests and Activities

Check out the local poetry scene! Here are some contests in West Roxbury and Worcester County, as well as some activities.

Poetry Update

Symbol list

Here's a link to the symbol assignment. Symbol list

Tabloid Dreams Assignment Materials

Here's a link to all the fabulous choices! Tabloid Dreams Assignment or see them below. :)

The Marble Collection

Here's a link to The Marble Collection for submission of artwork and writing for the student magazine of Massachusetts High Schools. Submit your work!

The Marble Collection

Poetry Theft link

Here's the document. Add to it and use it for your poetry theft. Write your poetry theft on a separate document. (Use copy/paste.) Poetry Theft

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

Here's a link to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards if you'd like to enter. Scholastic Art and Writing

Found Poetry Assignment

For the found poetry assignments, we'll be taking several different approaches. Found poetry is, essentially, a collection of bits and pieces of other things put together for a poem.

The first found poem is due Monday, December 4. For our first found poem, you'll take samples from anything you've written for school. You can choose from multiple sources. Here's an example of a found poem put together from various lines of different blog posts I did for a class about teaching To Kill a Mockingbird:

Heart’s Race

Student discomfort, student defensiveness,

and my own worries about language and perspective-

I think of how it's a white man's story about race.

We've reintroduced "separate but equal."

I’ve enjoyed my students of color so much.

Somehow a barrier sprang up

that by adulthood, we would be separated from that option of mixing.

The bigotry was all supposed to be on the down low,

nuanced,

not spelled out in big capital letters

by a man, with the mouth of a megaphone
in order to keep and wield power.

For our second found poem, we'll be stealing lines from other students for a mash-up.