By KYLE CHEROMCHA Special to The Day
Publication: The Day
New London - When Bruce Snider agreed to host a poetry workshop with a group of fifth-graders from the Regional Multicultural Magnet School in New London, he wanted to help children relate to poetry and poets.
"One of our main goals was to introduce kids to a living writer," said Snider, the poet-in-residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington this spring. "Since most poetry they read is written a long time ago, I think a lot of kids have the feeling that in order to be a poet you have to be dead."
Snider teamed up with the school's literacy coach, Heidi Simmons, to put on two workshops for selected students, designed as an extension of the yearlong, in-class poetry instruction.
Despite being pulled from an all-school assembly to attend the workshop, the group of 10 students filed into the conference room last Friday morning eager to share the poems they had written for homework.
"What did you notice about that poem?" Snider pressed the group after each student finished reading their work. "What stood out to you? How did it make you think in a different way?"
Despite the onslaught of questions, the kids had no shortage of answers. Often, multiple hands were wiggling in the air before he had even finished his sentence.
Friday's workshop focused on the use of sounds in poetry, including alliteration, repetition, rhythm and onomatopoeia - words that imitate the sounds they describe. After guiding the group through an analysis of "Ode to a Drum," in which the students debated the various interpretations of the words, Snider set them to work on their own sound-inspired poems.
"I want you to think of a sound, any sound, and find a way to capture it in the way you write the poem," he said. "Make it as vivid, as strange and as memorable as you can."
One student wrote about the "blip-plop" sound of pots boiling over on the stove in her busy kitchen at home; another wrote about the sound of scribbling pencils that filled the room as the other students worked on their poems. Snider said that it's important for them to write their own poems because it's a kind of experiential learning they can't get from just reading.
Principal Sally Myers was thrilled at how well the students responded to Snider's instruction.
"This is the first time we've had a poet come in and work with the kids in this way," she said. "From what I saw, I thought it was amazing."
