Overview

An inspiring, one-of-a-kind collection of innovative, inclusive approaches to teaching poetry in today's college classrooms. As any poetry teacher knows, the best ideas about poems are built with students. In Teaching Poetry Now, this seemingly simple premise yields an unprecedented trove of practical strategies for enlivening college-level poetry instruction and making it more inclusive. In thirty-one short, provocative essays, contributors draw on their diverse classroom experiences and research to share innovative approaches to teaching the study and writing of poetry. Helpful discussion of curricula, learning theories, activities, assignments, assessments, and digital tools make this groundbreaking volume an invaluable resource for faculty who teach poetry across language and literature fields—from creative writing to literary studies to rhetoric and composition to cultural studies and beyond. Challenging the dicta, norms, and implicit biases that have dominated poetry pedagogy for decades, Teaching Poetry Now jump-starts a long overdue discussion of the theories, methods, and stakes of teaching poetry today.

Full Product Details

Author:   Caroline Gelmi (Associate Professor of English and Communication, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) ,  Lizzy LeRud (Instructor, University of Oregon)
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Weight:   0.435kg
ISBN:  

9798855805673

Pages:   310
Publication Date:   01 February 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Preface: Editors' Note on the Now Introduction Caroline Gelmi and Lizzy LeRud Part 1: How We Think About Poems 1. A Conversation on Dinétics Esther G. Belin and Jake Skeets 2. Post-Craft Michael Leong 3. Unsettling Modernist Poetry Erin Kappeler 4. Legacies of Empire in the Western Poetic Line: The Problem of Caesura Heather H. Yeung 5. Unpacking the Interpretive Toolbox: Historical Poetics in Introductory Courses Caroline Gelmi 6. ""I hear it now""; or, Teaching Students to Read Poems in Novels Annelise Chick and Gabrielle Stecher 7. Moving ""Rooms"" Across Borders: Putting Pressure on the Stanza Reem Abbas and Heather H. Yeung 8. Under the Sonnet's Menace: Helping Students Navigate Race, Constraint, and Rage in the Post-Romantic Sonnet Anton Vander Zee 9. Rawest Radical Material: Teaching Poetry's Diction William Fogarty 10. Reading, Misreading, and Rereading ""We Real Cool"" Mike Chasar Part 1 Cluster: Ideas on Teaching Lyric 11. Retheorizing Lyric via the Pedagogy of Eighteenth-Century Antislavery Poetry Chris Chan 12. Lyric Borders: Reading and Writing with Gloria Anzaldúa's New Mestiza Leah Huizar 13. Lorenzo Thomas's Griot Lyric: Reading Persona and Race in the Digital Age Lukas Moe 14. Lyric After Lyricization: Learning and Unlearning the Lyric I in the Activist Classroom Anastasia Nikolis Part 2: What We Do With Poems 15. Poetry as Empathetic Praxis: Black Poetics and the Creative Writing Classroom Monique-Adelle Callahan D. 16. Performing Desire: Collaborating with Sex Worker Poets in the Composition Classroom Philippa Chun 17. Oral Poetries Are (Not) Lost to Us: Ethnopoetics in the Digital Age Kenneth Sherwood 18. Against Mastery: Working Through the Desire for Order in Teaching M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong! Jess A. Goldberg 19. Future-Facing Archives: Phillis Wheatley Peters and the Intertextual Poetic Past Sarah Nance 20. Cultivating a Culture of Enjoyment in the Poetry Classroom Rachel B. Griffis 21. Reframing Modernism: Creative Composition and the Analysis of Modernist Poetry at an HBCU Candis Pizzetta 22. Whose Voice Matters? Reading Aloud Across Language and Ability Eileen Sperry 23. Reimagining the Poet's Procedure: Imitation as Literary Analysis Lizzy LeRud 24. From Stifling to Expansive: Reimagining Poetry Teaching and Learning with The South African Poetry Project Sooriagandhi Naidoo, Toni Gennrich, and Eunice Phiri 25. Transgressive Teaching and Subverting Censorship in the Dual-Credit Classroom Ronnie K. Stephens 26. The Florence Poetry Collective: Death Row as a Site of Poetic Production and Expressive Sovereignty Joe Lockard Part 2 Cluster: Project-Based Learning 27. Engaging Poetry: The Review as Critique and Conversation Victoria Chang and Dean Rader 28. City, State, and Self: A Collaborative Book Project James Innis McDougall 29. Experimental Indexes: Quantifying Poetic Patterns and Project-Based Reading Nick Sturm 30. Teaching Anti-Racist Research Practices Beyond Research Papers: Emma Lazarus, Esther Schor, and My First-Year Composition Students Mollie Barnes 31. Student Research, Digital Humanities, and Cross-Campus Collaboration: Building Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde Susan Rosenbaum, Suzanne W. Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan List of Contributors

Reviews

""The achievement of this volume is nothing less than a new approach to literary criticism. Hopeful and necessary, Teaching Poetry Now takes seriously that poetry pedagogy is important and needs reshaping. Contributors report from the front lines of a range of institutions, giving a whole and accurate picture of the stakes of humanities teaching today. Sure to be widely circulated and shared, the thirty-one essays are original, sparkling, and easy to follow, as well as profound scholarly interventions in their own right. Teaching Poetry Now will help not only first-time instructors but also seasoned educators improve and revamp their poetry teaching across time periods."" — Meredith Martin, author of Poetry's Data: Digital Humanities and the History of Prosody ""Timely and compelling, this book provides a critical reminder: poetry matters, and teaching poetry now is transformative. The title alone can be read as a demand and an urgent call to action. Teaching Poetry Now is like a mixtape featuring artists who have their own style, genre, and rhythm but who all participate as equals. I cannot wait to implement some of these approaches in my own courses on poetry, social justice education, and hip-hop studies."" — Crystal Leigh Endsley, author of The Fifth Element: Social Justice Pedagogy Through Spoken Word Poetry

Author Information

Caroline Gelmi is Associate Professor of English and Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Lizzy LeRud is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions