Dartmouth Middle poets celebrate National Poetry Month

Apr 13, 2016

April is National Poetry Month and no one is getting as much out of it as the students of Dartmouth Middle School.

On Tuesday night, students, parents, and teachers enjoyed an evening of poetry readings and book fair fun at Family Poetry Night. Spearheaded by the school’s Literacy Committee, made up of Laura Gardner, Stephanie Camara,  Susan Tullson, Karen Babbitt and Carl Robidoux, the event was a success with a great turnout.

For the first portion of the night, students and parents got to shop through the school’s book fair and enjoy the MakerSpace setup in the library. MakerSpace provides a creative way for students to explore technology through the green screen, 3D printers, and robots as just a few of the available tools.

After the book fair, parents congregated in the library to watch their students perform their poems. Though all students were invited to read their poems, the top poets in each class, selected by teachers, were also invited to perform.

“The students did an awesome job presenting their original poems,” Babbitt said.

Dartmouth High School senior Patrick Kitchen kicked off the next portion of the evening by reading a poem from Billy Collins. Kitchen is the Poetry Out Loud regional winner and he will be s moving on to Nationals in Washington D.C. in May.

Babbitt could see that students in attendance were very inspired by Kitchen’s performance.

Teachers will continue teaching poetry reading and writing in English language arts classrooms. Some teams are teaching co-curricular poetry writing, Babbitt said.

The students all left with an anthology of all the Dartmouth Middle School poems entered in the contest, 35 in all.

“So now they are all published authors,” Babbitt said.

Student poetry will be submitted to the 20th Annual National Student Poetry Contest.