12. Discovering the Poet Within
Becoming a Teacher Who Writes - Let Teaching be your Writing Muse - Nancy S. Gorrell
Nancy S. Gorrell [+]
English teacher and poet
Description
Chapter 12 describes how the author discovered the poet within, prompted by a moment of necessity. The moment began with a phone call: “Grandma has cancer.” Shortly thereafter, when the author was preparing for a dinner party, she recalled how her grandmother “made roses out of radishes.” For months thereafter, images of radishes kept recurring to her. One week before her grandmother’s 83rd birthday, she saw the image – radishes in cups of water. As the author reclaimed the hidden image of blooming radishes, she wrote her first poem, “Born of Necessity,” and read the poem to her grandmother one month before she died. “In What I Learned,” the author discusses how that poem may not have been written if it were not for years of teaching poetry. She discusses the influence of William Carlos Williams, but knows her poem remains her own. From its creation, she teaches her students that poetry is “saying something you can’t say in any other way.” Chapter 12 concludes with a model contributor poem, “Dipping into Infinity,” by Amy Uyematsu; Interdisciplinary Applications for Teachers and Students; and a “Reclaiming a Hidden or Recurring Image” writing prompt.