It’s the 4th day of the 19th Annual Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers’ website, and I love starting my day with posts shared by writers across the globe who offer a glimpse into their daily lives. This month, I’m featuring a living poet each day and creating a Cento poem from the poems in their collections. You can read more about Cento poetry here. Today, I’m featuring Sandra Cisneros as an author I have long admired for her short stories. She’s also a poet! You can read more about Sandra Cisneros at her website. Here writing themes offer a glimpse of her cultural heritage. Im using Woman Without Shame to inspire a cento.
I’m adding an additional step-by-step photo process to my post today, since a couple of readers reached out wanting to know more about my process for writing Cento poems – and teaching students to write them. I’ll share in photos why even the most reluctant writer in your class might catch a case of poetry fever – without ever lifting a pencil.
Start with a favorite poetry book – or a stack of them.. Today, I used this one.
Next, gather some blank tongue depressors and a variety of Sharpie markers.
At this point, it’s not too late to turn back. This kind of poetry is highly contagious, and once it settles into your soul, you can’t escape.
But now that you have come this far, begin choosing favorite or random lines of poetry and writing the line on one side of the tongue depressor and the title of the poem and the poet’s name on the other.
Once you have a bank of lines, arrange them and rearrange them until you find the sweet spot of the poem the way you like it. Moving the sticks around, you’ll see how just one move changes everything – like a game of chess. But once you have it, you’ll know. At that point, add a title. In the illustration above, I titled mine “Security Deposit.”
Take a photo of the lines, and then – – very important – – flip them in order from top to bottom so that the poet is credited and the line order is preserved by poem title. Take a photo of the back, too, emphasizing to students that this credits the original poet.
If you don’t have tongue depressors, you can use strips of paper or cardstock. Or just write it out, like this:
Security Deposit
It takes growing older
To prove love is ever
wanting in
For Rent.
My Cento is taken from lines in these poems, in this order: Back Then or Even Now; Te A-; Note, La Casa Mag de lena, Lamy, New Mex; Sky Without a Hat.
Once the contagion has set in, you’ll soon have baskets and baskets of poetry lines. You may even decide to put magnets on the backs of them so students can use cookie sheets or magnetic boards as pop-up poetry stations. You might even find that you create collections to organize by theme of units or poets of a particular era. The possibilities are endless. Don’t be surprised if students themselves start checking out poetry books and asking to add lines to the bank of sticks. You may want to keep a healthy stock of supplies – because this will grow and grow and grow until you have a Poetry Wonderland of lines growing like kudzu vines!
Students will beg you to let them write poetry, and you can create a community Padlet for them to upload their poems by scanning a QR code to upload pictures of their poems in sticks.
They will do this because they are now poets who can’t wait to share their creations.
Common Threads 