poetry in the park. literally, though, in boyertown.

a small traveling poetry class i've been teaching in cafés and coffee shops took some well-grounded roots in a park setting in the initial moments of june, and we'll be meeting there again next week before chancing a day of two hours of lessons alongside the schuylkill river in pottstown in the near future. 

in the heat of this early june  afternoon, we kept shelter in the kinder shade under the main pavilion at boyertown community park in berks county.

we're also open to expanding the group, as it's a small class, and we like it that way, but we wouldn't mind some other brains joining the pull of this poetry, too.

our lesson for this class involved the concept of writing letters to poems, which we may explore more in the future.

my student barbara tucker had some wonderful samples of pre-line break freewriting pieces she put together just before class, and they are captured in photographs below in blue link. some of first sets if lines in one poem are also below, following her handwritten words in the first version of these ideas on paper.

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your body * instant zen

an excerpt by barbara tucker

wash the dishes, the magazine article said, 

it's calming, all you have to do is scrub mindfully, 

focus on the now, not your to do list, not 

the 1,030 people who drowned from a leaking boat fleeing 

murder and rape and hunger in the sea, all of them 

in one week, nowhere to go, no place safe to be, 

children, skinny, ragged, women with bloated bellies, 

old men, women in tattered shawls...

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