Cracking Poetry Wide Open — Part 2 Piecing Together Poems

A few months ago, I wrote about a community project I named Cracking Poetry Wide Open, wherein the mission is to introduce poetry in a new way to make reading, writing, and understanding poetry accessible to people.

The Project

People generally have a stiff, disinterested response to poetry. They think it’s boring or highbrow, hard to understand and even harder to write. With this project, the goal was not only to break people’s expectations about poetry but to demonstrate the endless possibilities with poetry, help participants find their voice, and provide a new tool with which to express and share emotions and experiences.

I’ve read of people implementing poetry readings at retirement homes before, but the scope of our project involved getting the residents to write poetry too. Since I couldn’t find any other groups or projects discussing a poetry workshop at retirement homes, I’ve decided to write about what we did in case anyone else would like to do something similar.

I previously wrote about the first part of our workshop, where we eased in the participants with poems we’d written (which they enjoyed because of the connection to speaking with the author of the poem), a few famous poems they’d remember from their childhood, poems by other local poets, and so on. This provided an opening to discuss the poems, what they liked about them, what memories of their own the poems stirred, etc.

For the second workshop we began piecing together poetry.

Second Workshop

• Time: An hour minimum. You have to be on task to stay within that timeframe, but it’s not a bad starting point. A lot of these workshops have run closer to an hour and forty-five minutes.
• Space: At this point, table and chairs are needed to do the poetry activities so each participant has their own space to work in. We found that rooms with appropriate accommodations include the dining room, activities or craft room, or library. Each facility has a different setup, but we found that they all had at least some sort of common room with tables and chairs. A room with a closing door helps block out noise, but that is not an option everywhere.
• Participants/Helpers: In this area, you have to work with what you have, but there are a few helpful things I learned along the way that are worth thinking about. We found that the more independent the retirement community, the less likely they were to participate. So places like independent living, assisted living, etc., residents are not as accustomed to getting together for activities. Although each facility is different.
  Some participants may have issues with reading small print, or reading at all without their glasses. Some may be hard of hearing. Some individuals have a hard time expressing themselves verbally. These are all things to consider and know about the participants going into a workshop. The more help individuals need with things like reading, the more volunteers you’ll want.
  We ran workshops at four different retirement homes, but had the most success and  continued attendance at two. One where there were between 4-6 participants, which was really nice if we had 2-3 members of our writing group to help. The other had anywhere from 12-18 participants and I felt we didn’t have enough hands to provide the individual attention that I would have liked, but the residents really enjoyed the program and kept returning every month, so it still worked even though at times we only had two of us running the workshop.
• Activity: For this workshop, Margaret (who was my main support through this entire endeavor, though we certainly had help from the other members of our writing group) selected a quote about poetry from Edward Frank Allen: “The world needs poetry for its vitalizing strength … It satisfies a hunger for beauty…. It recaptures vanished moments and recreates scenes that have grown dim through passing years. It stirs wholesome emotions and gives glimpses … of eternal things. It entertains, it inspires, and, in time of need, it comforts.” We printed this quote in a large font and divided the quote into small phrases such as “The world needs,” “poetry,” “it comforts,” etc.
  Each participant was given the whole quote with the pieces mixed together with the instruction to create a poem using the phrases, placing them in any order they would like. They could use all of the pieces or just a few.
  The result was magical as the participants realized how easy it was to create something that sounded so wonderful where they didn’t’ have to come up with the words, only piece them together.
  After they completed the exercise, everyone shared what they had pieced together. Some of the creations began in a similar fashion to the original quote. But the best part was having the residents have this sense of accomplishment and ease in creating a poem and having it praised by others. When the residents found poetry accessible and that their work was valued, well, the light in their eyes and teary-eyed responses are things I won’t soon forget.
  Here are a few of the pieces they created: