Students seem naturally attracted to poetry, and yet studying it sometimes has negative connotations for them.

One of our teachers, Nancy Donaldson, shared with me a great site for engaging students with poems in a more personal way.

It’s called the Favorite Poem Project, begun by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

The feature that most interested me were the videos, created by participants from across the country, (some students, some adults) about their favorite poem.

The short videos do an excellent job of connecting the poem with the reader’s life and explaining how the reader connects with the poem.  They aren’t just a reading of the poem, but a very short evocation of the reader’s life and how the poem was important to them.

I also think the ideas behind the site could be translated into an excellent project for a classroom as well, and I’m sure it has already been done somewhere.  In addition to viewing the videos, students could submit their own favorites to the database, or create their own videos as a project here.

A few interesting ones I viewed:

Yina Lang(high school student) reading “I’m Nobody! Who are You.”

Richard Samuel (a glassblower) reading “Poem.”

  John Ulrich (college student) reading “We Real Cool.”

The video part of the project seems like an excellent merging of digital video technology, storytelling, and literature, with a really meaningful result.