April 2024
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!!
Curated by Kimberly Jae
It’s April!!!! Do you know what that means. . . It’s NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!!!! National Poetry Month, established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, is our opportunity whether reading, writing, teaching poetry or curating poetry spaces, to engage with poetry. According to the Academy of American Poets, the goals of National Poetry Month are to,
highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
encourage the reading of poems
assist teachers in bringing poetry into their classrooms
increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
encourage increased publication and distribution of poetry books, and
encourage support for poets and poetry.
At the tender age of 5, I decided I wanted to be a writer. A poet, absolutely not! I was a short story writer. An essayist. When I reached high school and got into a performing arts high school concentrating in theater, I became a playwright. Up until this point, I had only read more traditional poets like John Keats and Langston Hughes (but only during Black History Month.) This was back in the 1900s (as my joints love to remind me every time the weather changes how old I am) in the Deep South where education and instruction were not diverse. We only really read about people who looked like us in February and mostly stories of oppression. Instead, I would get my fill of BIPOC and AAPI stories sitting in the library reading books of mythology and legends. I would learn about far away lands, gods and goddesses and other tales among the brightly colored stacks of kids’ books.
But poetry? No thank you.
I did not know the heritage of language, writing and storytelling by BIPOC and AAPI poets until I went to college at a HBCU (Historically Black College and University.) In every class, we were given books by BIPOC authors. Collections of plays, stories, poems, essays not just about oppression, but life. Love. Family. Adventure. Politics. Critical Analysis.
But was I a poet? No.
Then my actor friends, who were also teaching artists, started bringing me to open mics. Some open mic performers were great! Some not so great. But they wrote. They wrote freely. Uninhibited. Suddenly I was hearing poems! I had never allowed myself such uninhibited freedom as a writer! To try something new. To not be scared if it didn’t work out.
I became friends (or maybe better to say poetry acquaintances) with poets on the scene who would go on to do great things. Make their way to Def Poetry Jam. Publish books, win awards while sounding absolutely nothing like John Keats. Not to say Keats is not a good poet, but to say that there is an inherent value to other voices that my Deep Southern education (and oftentimes in other places here, even now in 2024) did not value. Alas, I would not discover Slam Poetry for another 15 years.
But was I a poet? Nope. Not at all.
Did I write somewhat poetic things? Yes. Did they suck? Quite. Imagine every cliché thrown into staunch iambic pentameter. Eventually when I read more, heard more, discovered free verse would I begin to write more authentically. Less, “Let’s be Emily Dickinson!,” and more let’s be Kimberly Jae.
I won’t mislead you, dear readers, to think I actually knew who Kimberly Jae was at this time. That would eventually take a couple decades, 2 kids, cancer, Hurricane Katrina, a ton of travel, a ton of slams and slam poets from around the world, a stroke, a language disability and chronic illness and some fellowships to figure all that out. But. . . what I knew was I was a writer who liked to experiment.
But was I a poet? Still no.
I didn’t really get into writing poetry until I had no other choice. I was pregnant at the time, unbeknownst to me growing two kids and a cancerous tumor at the same time, while being at odds with my twins’ father and with the WORST writer’s block possible. My writer’s block was so bad, I couldn’t even write a paragraph. Heck, a sentence was pushing it. But I was also a Creative Writing minor, in a Creative Writing class with Creative Writing assignments. Yes, it’s nice that I was sick, swollen, depressed and couldn’t write, but that meant nothing. I still had assignments due, and I needed to pass that class.
So I did what I needed to do to pass and changed genres. Stopped trying to finish that play or story and just wrote poems. I stopped trying to make them fit into pretty little boxes of “right” poetry and just wrote what came. I played with language. I played with consonant counts. I still used some clichés. But I found myself with a stack of poems and the editor of the literary journal wanting to publish them. This would be the very first time I was published professionally.
Did I consider myself a poet? Nope. Just a playwright who got somewhat lucky before going back to writing plays.
It would be a decade and a half, during another emotional time in my life, that I would begin to see myself as a poet. This was now on Baltimore’s Slam Poetry scene, a place I accidentally fell into not knowing how much of my life was about to change because of it. In the intervening years, I had become a teacher, later a principal. As a teacher, I brought my love of reading, my love of books, stories, research and language with me to the classroom. And no, this was not only in English class. While I am certified to teach English, I preferred to teach Social Studies and Theater. And it was there that I brought my first loves, reading and writing, to children.
As a nod to National Poetry Month, all the poets (or like me Not-the-Poet) and all teachers struggling to find ways to bring poetry to your students, to just write, I offer this activity: Poetry Tic Tac Toe! (See below).
Easily adaptable, writers write 3 poems that fit any of the prompts to make Tic Tac Toe. Complete boxes in a row, column, or diagonal. Use a different form for each poem. Create teams to claim squares. Use the prompts to create a spinner to see who wins the prompt. As a class, do a prompt a day and use name sticks to select a student to pick a prompt. Create a board of your own and use different prompts. There are no rules. The only goal is to write.
For April, National Poetry Month, I curated poems using the Poetry Tic Tac Toe. No, we did not make Tic Tac Toe. April 7th’s poet, Atena O. Danner’s poem Between Skin and Spine fits into the “What brings you peace?” square. April 14th’s poet, Triston Dabney’s poem Freshman Year fits into the “What hurts?” square. For April 21st’s poet, I have the pleasure of introducing Sloane Kali Faye who’s poem, Kiss Kill (A Haiku Sonnet) is her first publication! Kiss Kill (A Haiku Sonnet) fits into the “Free Space” square.
These poets, as different as they can be stylistically, are wonderful poets who took the Poetry Tic Tac Toe board and wrote. Created. Played with language. Put words to a page. And that is the point of National Poetry Month, is it not? The goals may be around highlighting, encouraging, assisting, and increasing published poetry, but ultimately, you need poets. So write. Not perfect. Not “right,” just write. You never know, you might find yourself like I did, convinced I was Not-the-Poet who was actually, in fact, a poet.
Happy writing!
Poetry Tic Tac Toe