Slice of Life: Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.
Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Lisa, Melanie, and Lanny
for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

Promoting poetry as a middle school student is not a particularly popular thing to do.  That's why I'm always grateful when some of our book club members join the fun during lunch to pass out poems to fellow students for Poem in Your Pocket Day.  

Our after school book club, Books, Brownies & Beyond, spends poetry month reading poems, sharing poems, rolling poems, and tying them with ribbon in preparation for Poem in Your Pocket Day.  As students entered the lunchroom, they saw our display of poetry books.  Book club members roamed the lunchroom with poems in hand to share and spread poetry love.  

I donned my apron of many pockets (12+) and spent lunch time visiting students in line for the snack bar.  "Pick a pocket, any pocket!" was followed by an oral rendition of the poem.  I was touched when one boy responded to my reading of "Then and Now" by commenting, "That's good.  That's part of my childhood."  And when an 8th grade girl said that "The Moment" made her feel really calm, I gifted her my copy of the poem.  Some of the poems I enjoyed sharing included, "The Owl," "Afternoon on a Hill," "A Writing Kind of Day," and "Remember."  

I found myself navigating a disagreement between our co-principals. He argued that the poem she had received was not a poem.  It was from Bob Raczka's book, Lemonade: and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word.  I found myself explaining that poetry can simply be wordplay.  He wasn't sure that he agreed.

We were excited when students or staff shared the poem they received along with a personal connection to the poem.  It was a lunchtime filled with wordplay and poetic goodness.  We can't wait to do it again next year.