The first NCTE session I ever attended was one of Melissa Alter Smith’s #TeachLivingPoets workshops. I found her on Twitter (back in Twitter’s golden age), and I was immediately drawn to the simplicity and brilliance of her approach to poetry instruction. Why not center contemporary poets—living, breathing writers students can follow, connect with, and grow alongside?
Teach Living Poets, by Lindsay Illich and Melissa Alter Smith (2021), published by NCTE Press, is a comprehensive guide for doing just that. Illich and Smith offer guidance on discovering poetry, ways of reading, common poetic moves to discuss with students, as well as methods for teaching and designing with student learning in mind. The beauty of this book—not just as a rich collection of sample lessons, writing prompts, and a treasure trove of poetry for a wide range of classroom use—is its integrity. Illich and Smith remind us of the agency we have as teachers:
“When teaching living poets, students are able to see that poetry is happening right now; it is relevant to them. When students engage with others outside of the classroom space, they become literary citizens entering into a community of readers, writers, and thinkers. But their access to this space is contingent on their teacher being an active member of the literary and teaching community.” (p. 166, emphasis added)
Teaching living poets doesn’t simply make poetry more accessible (though that is certainly a worthy goal); it makes it more alive. That sense of aliveness is for us, as teachers, too.
This book will help any secondary ELA educator deepen their practice in a community-centered way. It invites us to join poets and fellow teachers alike in making the language arts a creative, engaging, and vibrant space of inquiry and depth.
Aside from the book, I also highly recommend the #TeachLivingPoets website as a resource-rich, inspiring place to start.
Meg Davis Roberts Meg Davis Roberts is an Assistant Professor of Adolescence English Education at SUNY New Paltz where she also works with the Hudson Valley Writing Project and serves on the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Commission on the Teaching of Poetry. Meg began her teaching career in 2015—teaching middle and high school English Language Arts in the Chicagoland area and East Jerusalem—and is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT). She received her doctorate in English Education from Teachers College Columbia University under the advisement of Ruth Vinz; at TC, she was the Enid & Lester Morse Fellow for new teachers.