National Poetry Month is something I celebrate every year with my students. In the senior poetry class, students create special installations that allow a viewer to step in and experience a poem with the added enjoyment of the elements of line, shape, texture, form, space, color, and value.

In our pandemic world, students could choose to install their pieces at home, in their neighborhood, at the Merle-Smith Campus, or virtually. They could choose to include a poem, series of poems, or parts of poems; they then had to figure out how to make a visually striking presentation of their choice.

Students in my ninth-grade classes create poetry cards either by hand or on Google Slides. Again, a poem, series of poems, or parts of poems were all acceptable choices of content. They then had to illustrate them in some way that could be literal or figurative. Those poetry cards are displayed all around the Upper School so that anyone can stop for a moment and have a breath of poetry in their day. Enjoy some of the projects below.