April is Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets celebrated the very first Poetry Month in America in 1996, and since then poetry has been celebrated world-wide throughout the month of April and at other times during the year. The main goal of Poetry Month is to create awareness about this less explored genre and encourage people to remember the famous poets and their wonderful pieces of poetry.
Poetry dates back to thousands of years with the first written piece cited as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which tells an epic tale of a hero in ancient Mesopotamia, written in 2100 B.C. From the epic poems of ancient civilizations to more modern poems, poetry opens an interesting historical and cultural window and should be shared with children. Reading poetry from different countries and languages is an excellent opportunity to encourage children to share their cultural heritage with others, and to take pride in an art form that is part of their identity and may have been passed down across many generations.
Poetry can range from simple and fun to more complicated and abstract. A love of poetry isn’t something children are born with. It’s easy to look at a short jumble of words, especially the ones that don’t rhyme, and to “not get it.” When first looking at a piece of poetry, sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend. Analyzing the meaning behind the poem and what point the poet is trying to convey is helpful in encouraging the brain to think of different things from various perspectives. This is one of the many reasons why reading poetry proves beneficial for improving critical thinking.
Poetry offers wonderful opportunities for reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Poetry is fun to read, encourages a love of literature, and builds fluency with young readers. Poetry introduces children to fun vocabulary and gives them a chance to expand their vocabulary knowledge, to play with language, and to work with different rhythms and rhyme patterns. Poets use a few words to capture and image or a feeling. Poetry can be short and less intimidating for struggling readers. Fun poems instill a love of poetry and hopefully show students that poetry can be fun, silly, and surprising. The more serious poems give students a taste of critical analysis without going to deep. Research has proven that reading poetry develops oral language skills, and the development of oral language skills has a strong correlation to reading proficiency.
Poetry is so versatile. There are so many types of poetry and so many different forms that eventually, each child is bound to find a poem or poet he or she enjoys! The WAB libraries have a great collection of quality poetry books. You can search the library catalog here. Also, many modern poets have their own websites where they often share samples of their work. Here are a few of my favorite:
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