A few days ago a student told me she loved poetry written by my friend. In fact, she enjoyed my friend’s book so much that she asked if she could write an essay about it for high school English.
Her teacher refused. My friend was an unsuitable subject . . .
She was still alive.
For this assignment, the subject had to be dead. My friend and I are very happy she didn’t make this particular cut. But why not encourage students to read writers who still have heartbeats?
In his LitHub article, “Whatever Your Classroom, Please Teach More Living Poets,” Nick Ripatrazone describes the movement to “Teach Living Poets,” as well as the elder “Poets in Schools” initiative. Even currently-deceased writers Robert Frost and Donald Hall argued that living poets belonged in the classroom.
These vital programs help connect living writers with current students. Melissa Alter Smith, creator of “#TeachLivingPoets,” has collected a slew of resources for teachers, including a virtual library, a network to find poets, poetry reviews by teachers for teachers, and lesson plans.
Just check out this fantastic page of lesson plans for Crystal Wilkinson’s new collection, Perfect Black. This unit, a whopping 41 pages, brings a living, contemporary writer to students in an immediate way . . . While also connecting her work to writers such as Maggie Smith, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
As much as I love centuries-old writing by dead authors–I have not one, but two “I Read Dead People” T-shirts–we can’t send the message that “real” literature is old literature, and the “good” writers are molderin’ in the grave.
Some of my favorite people, writers included, are deader than a Norwegian blue. By all means, read as many dead writers as you want, but use the work of the not-dead-yet to show students that poetry itself is a living tradition.
Not to mention living writers still need to eat. We have bills to pay and adorable pets to feed, so maybe toss us some change, will you? “Big Textbook” won’t miss it.