I have a poem on the Poetry Out Loud list!

Poetry Out Loud

I’ve worked as a teaching artist for Nebraska’s Poetry Out Loud for the past 11 years. In Poetry Out Loud, students around the country memorize poems from a list, anything from a centuries-old sonnet by Shakespeare to a Naomi Shihab Nye poem written in the past few years. I love coaching students on how to choose the poem that’s right for them and finding their own way to recite it, and I’ve certainly dreamed about having one of my own poems on the list. Today, a student from San Luis Obispo High School emailed me with questions for a school assignment as he said he was working on my poem “The Story of Ferdinand the Bull” for POL. Which I didn’t know was on the list. So, well, my day has improved significantly. And it wasn’t half bad to start with.