Foreword

For the past week, I’ve been conferencing with students ahead of their midterm report cards. It’s a lovely process for me: we dive into their thinking and skillset together, looking for ways they can move forward. While I’ve been doing that, my students have had another line of inquiry to follow: how do we share their amazing poetry with the world?

Our thought process actually started with reading. We studied a few poems together, like Dominique Bernier-Cormier’s “Pamplemousse,” and then students split into poem circles, examining poems like Fatimah Asghar’s “Microaggression Bingo,” Joseph A. Dandurand’s “Paint,” Kiran Dhaliwal’s “mother’s tongue,” and Shaun Robinson’s “Tyler, You’re Terrific” (links to which can be found here). My students read, annotated, organized their thoughts, discussed with their circle, and then reflected via a response journal and mind map (which focused on the big idea The exploration of text and story deepens our understanding of diverse, complex ideas about identity, others, and the world).

Finally we were ready to write. We started with prompt stations: the first set was topical or involved models, and the second set focused on literary devices. Then we watched Clint Smith’s TED Talk on the dangers of silence and wrote to that idea or developed our own concepts. Then we studied revision, looking at examples from my own work of how to reshape or renovate a poem from top to bottom. And of course we revised and workshopped and edited. It was—no joke—so much fun.

When I asked how they wanted to share their work with the world, they chose a digital anthology. The result is this website, which has been written, revised, edited, collated, designed, and promoted by LA Matheson Secondary’s incredible English 11 students. In fact, I’m only writing the foreword because it was the sole remaining job.

We hope that in reading these poems, you find a new perspective. That you get the feels. That you laugh. That you pause and wonder. That you snap your fingers and nod your head and say to yourself, holy wow did this person nail it! Mostly we hope you enjoy yourself—because we did.

Kyle McKillop
Teacher & English Lead Learner
LA Matheson Secondary
April 2019