Slam Poetry

Verselove is a community celebration of poetry in April—an invitation to write, read, and reflect together. You’re welcome to write a poem a day or to come and go as you need. Reading and leaving a brief note—a line you loved, an image that stayed, a feeling a poem stirred—is also a meaningful way to participate. This is a generous, low-pressure space. We’re glad you’re here.

Our Host: Ashey Valencia-Pate

Ashley lives in Titusville, Florida where she works as a high school English teacher. She believes in learning as a partnership between teachers and students. In her free time, she enjoys relaxing with her husband, three children, and three dogs.

Inspiration

When I discuss poetry with students, I highlight the importance of not only reading poems, but reading them aloud. Poems should be performed.  The impact of an enjambed or end-stopped line, the rhyme scheme, and stressed words in each line come even more alive when  they are spoken.

Poetry can be a cathartic space, and a place to reclaim the voice within us. It can be moving, witty, languid, or full of snark.

Process

Today, I invite you to write about a topic you feel like you need to speak about. Slam poems often include a performance piece at around 3 minutes, but instead of focusing on length, I invite you to focus on:

~using rich language and showing your emotions
~using line-breaks to emphasize your tone and shape the mood
~playing with length or adding a shift to highlight a call to action.

Ashley’s Poem

The Testing Cord

We’re in a literacy crisis
I’m preaching poetic devices
Think critically, fight the boxes
Chase them with wit of the foxes

Readers lost in a current
Someone cries, “Choice is abhorrent!”
Never read or write for joy
Just connect to the depth, employ
Those test-taking strategies
Little echo-chamber tragedies

One right choice. One right answer
Synchronized by puppet masters
Fall in line, click the choice
Forget you have a voice.

Or…

Fight against the machine
Reimagine this bleak scene
Slam a fist on the podium
Raining research before them
Bring back sliding glass doors
Cut the stifling
testing cord

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.