Hey lovelies!

Let’s consider our earliest forays into the world of poetry. Most of us first learned nursery rhymes early on in childhood. Some of the lullabies, rhyming songs and simple poems that we memorized as little children in North America have been around for centuries– “Jack & Jill,” “Hickory Dickory Dock,” and “This Little Piggy” are just a few from the multitude of well known rhymes from the mid-18^th century. “Little Miss Muffet” and “Humpty Dumpty” came to us in the early 19^th century.

As we got older, we learned about ABAB rhyme schemes, haikus and limericks, then eventually free verse and iambic pentameter—just some examples from the vastly diverse world of poetry. In school, we even had to compose some poetry. There wasn’t much emphasis on whether the poetry was good or not. In fact, teachers often communicated the idea that poetry could be just about anything, that it wasn’t good or bad. Understandable–we don’t want to discourage a child from being creative. Continue Reading