Taking Poetry to Work: A Few Good Tricks

Are you planning to celebrate Poetry at Work Day, this Tuesday, January 13th, 2015?

It doesn’t need to be elaborate. Here are a few ideas you can use to make it happen in your workplace.

1. Cut It Out Poetry

What you’ll need:

• old catalogs
• scissors
• pens
• index cards or full-sized paper
• glue or glue sticks
• pinboard and pins
• sample poem already pinned up (feel free to reprint and use ours)

Place the materials in a classic gathering place where things can be posted. The cafeteria. Near the water cooler. A conference or break room. Leave instructions as follows…

• did you know today is Poetry at Work Day?
• cut out words and phrases
• arrange into poems
• glue your words and phrases onto cards to make it official
• sign if you like, and post!

(if you are an online team, you could do something similar using Pinterest)
Sample Cut It Out Poem

2. Circle-It Poetry

What you’ll need:

• old newspapers or magazines
• pens or markers
• scissors
• pinboard and pins
• sample poem already pinned up (feel free to print and use ours)
Leave instructions as follows…

• did you know today is Poetry at Work Day?
• cut out a strip of print
• circle single words from top to bottom to create a poem
• sign if you like, and post!
3. Break It Poetry

What you’ll need:

• old books in a basket or bin
• pens or color markers
• paper, color or white
• pinboard and pins
• sample poem already pinned up (feel free to print and use ours)

Leave instructions as follows…

• did you know today is Poetry at Work Day?
• find a quote you like from any of the books here in the basket
• break the quote into lines to make a poem
• sign if you like, and post!

Break It Poetry is taken from Inspired: 8 Ways to Write Poems You Can Love. Here is how one person did this exercise very simply: Found Poems. And here is an answer to her follow-up challenge, using the same quote Megan used but rebreaking it…

Sample Break It Poem

Featured photo by Seafaringwoman, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Medicare poem by LW Lindquist. Whisper poem by Tina Howard. Sometimes Peace poem by L.L. Barkat.

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Want to take poetry to work every day? Consider subscribing to Every Day Poems. Just $5.99, inbox delivery. Our January theme is Coffee & Tea.

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L.L. Barkat

L.L. Barkat is the Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry and the author of six books for grown-ups and four for children, including the popular Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing. She has also served as a writer for The Huffington Post blog and is a freelance writer for Edutopia. Her poetry has appeared on NPR and at VQR and The Best American Poetry. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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