Literature

Marilyn Hazelton
Literature/Writer/Poet
2740 Andrea Dr., Allentown, PA 18103
610-433-4542
marilynhazelton@rcn.com

Poetry makes sense of the world. Putting words one after the other into rhythm, line, stanza, and poem educates and celebrates the lives of the students. I teach in elementary, middle and high schools, in colleges, in facilities for adjudicated youth and incarcerated women, and in transitional housing for mentally ill men and women. The themes with which I work include: historical and contemporary Japanese, Native American and other American poetries, as well as concrete, or visual poetry. I believe that reading and writing poetry has the power to connect us to our lives, to each other's lives, and to make us whole.

Ann Michael
Literature/Writer/Poet
2380 Brunner Rd., Emmaus, PA 18049
610-966-6250
JuanitaFB@aol.com

Reading and writing poetry engages us in many forms of learning and types of intelligences: linguistics, musical, inter- and intrapersonal, emotional. My goal is to enhance students' lives by showing that poetry can matter to them. Poetry is all around us — in patterns relating to math, rhythms, songs, family stories, history, science. I aim to facilitate awareness, reflection and connections, which guide students toward that leap of the imagination that separates art from the everyday.

Three main goals I have for all residencies are:

1. enhancing the existing curriculum—pushing the envelope into imaginative problem-solving
2. showing students that literature DOES have things to teach them about real life
3. getting students to read and write: by introducing new forms of reading and writing

Depending on the theme and age group, residency activities may include:

1. drumming, rattling, and reciting prosody patterns
2. incorporating drawing/painting with "word pictures"
3. learning simple poetry forms and writing short poems (haiku, triolets, double dactyls, cinquains, tritinas, etc.)
4. comparing poems written at the time of an historic event with those written in retrospect (in conjunction with history classes)
5. poems on animals: a bestiary anthology project
6. poetry that 'argues for' the environment: readings and a writing project
7. storytelling, on writing narrative and ballad poems
8. reading aloud—presenting poems in front of others (public speaking, acting, articulation and understanding)

Students benefit from my residencies because:

1. they learn to have some fun with language; usually increasing their vocabularies
2. they get a chance to "perform" in class or to produce a project (booklet, etc.)
3. they have an opportunity for self-expression they may not otherwise get
4. benefits the "outside-the-box" thinkers and learners who benefit by multiple-intelligence pedagogies

Example topics for my residencies include:

1. Haiga: poems and pictures in a Japanese style
2. The Civil War in poetry
3. Music and poems, lyrics, rhythm, sound
4. Poets in their teens
5. Exploring forms
6. Second Thoughts: Revision Strategies for Creative Writers (for the older student)

Susan Weaver
Literature/Writer/Poet
127 N. 10th St., Allentown, PA 18102
610-434-7476
susanpweaver@verizon.net

I delight in showing students that their feelings and experiences are the stuff of poetry. I gladly collaborate with classroom teachers and arts specialists to integrate writing into the curriculum, e.g. science (poetry-writing on birds) or social studies (ballads on prominent African-Americans for Black History Month). I teach tools and techniques for writing in prose and in a range of verse forms, helping participants connect to experiences and memories to discover what they want to say and to say it vividly. Appealing to the variety of ways students learn, I stimulate writing sometimes via group discussion, sometimes by drawing or looking at a picture, sometimes with movement. To loosen everybody up, I often guide a group to create a poem at the blackboard before the work individually.

Three main goals I have for all residencies are to:

1. help students find their own voices in poetry or prose
2. enable students to find ideas for writing from their own feelings and experiences
3. teach students how to make their writing more clear, vivid, and specific

Depending on the theme and age group, residency activities may include:

1. I share examples of poems that students can enjoy and use as models for their own writing
2. A visual arts activity as a pre-writing warm-up. Students might work in small groups to create a "color collage" with magazines pictures before writing poems with color imagery. To teach that a good haiku poem can be illustrated, I have students in small groups illustrate haiku poems on the blackboard. Or I might use a short movement or pantomime activity instead.
3. I often lead the class to write a poem together to practice a form. We brainstorm, with me at the board, writing.
4. Students write at their desks as I conference individually with them. As needed, I ask questions to help draw out details.
5. If willing, students share their work by reading it aloud (or I may ask to read it aloud).
6. I provide time for revision, if possible.
7. Often I type up all successful examples of student work from the session and return it as feedback in a later session.
8. Sometimes (with permission) I submit student work for publication, e.g., in Modern Haiku magazine. Some has been accepted.

Students benefit from my residencies because:

1. Students learn that word-play can be fun.
2. Students improve their skills in writing in one or more verse forms or in prose.
3. Students are encouraged to recognize revision as a key art of the wring process and something that all writers do.
4. Since I am a poet and author students can explore with e the meaning and inspiration for my poems or other wring I share with them.

Example topics for my residencies include:

1. Appreciating and writing haiku (3-line Japanese verse form)
2. Finding the Poet Within: Reading and experimenting with a range of verse forms
3. Also a doll-maker, I have combined doll-making and writing in a residency for women in a halfway-house setting.
4. I collaborate with teachers to use poetry/writing to teach concepts in other subject areas. For example, I have helped students to
   • write ballads on African-American heroes/heroines for Black History Month;
   • create skits and songs to present for D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programs;
   • incorporate poetry-writing with the study of trees for science.