Poet visits Lakeview Terrace Elementary

Poet Kenn Nesbitt leads Lakeview Terrace Elementary School students through a poem-writing activity Friday. Photo by Chrystal Doucette/Columbia Basin Herald

by Chrystal Doucette<br
| January 19, 2009 8:00 PM

MOSES LAKE — Lakeview Terrace Elementary School students learned to write poetry from comedic Spokane poet Kenn Nesbitt Friday.

Nesbitt, 46, led students through an activity in which they created a humorous poem.

Fourth- and fifth-grade children brainstormed ideas, eventually leading to a poem about a football team whose uniforms are switched with cheerleader uniforms.

The football team wins the game and even winds up in the hall of fame.

The activity began with choosing a subject, which started out as soccer. Creating a funny poem isn’t difficult, Nesbitt explained.

“All you have to ask yourself is, ‘What is funny about that?’”

Students came up with several ideas, including tripping on a ball, getting hit in the head with a ball, making a goal for the wrong team and dealing with stinky socks.

After the activity, Nesbitt answered questions from the children.

One student asked him what inspired him to become a poet.

“What really encouraged me was that I’d write these funny poems and I’d share them with kids and the kids would get really excited,” Nesbitt said.

He noted the poems made readers approach the material with enthusiasm.

Although Nesbitt now has several books, he didn’t begin writing poetry until age 32. As a child, nobody came to his school to talk to him about poetry.

“It never even occurred to me to write a poem until I was 32,” he said.

Before writing poetry, Nesbitt wrote magazine articles about cars.

Now, he has written about a thousand poems, he said.

Another student asked Nesbitt what kind of car he drives.

“I have a ‘dad mobile,’” he answered. “I have a white mini van.”

A student asked him if he ever wrote a story book, and he responded that he has not.

He said he is working on a cookbook, an idea of his 7-year-old daughter, who wanted to know, “What if there was a cookbook of recipes designed to give you gas?”

After the question-and-answer period, fourth-grade students met with Nesbitt for a writing workshop. Students also had a chance to get books signed by Nesbitt.

Student Crystal Goodrich, 9, said she believes Nesbitt is funny. She said she learned about poetry writing from him.

“(I learned) that it’s really easy,” Goodrich said. “You don’t really have to think about it, though sometimes you do.”

A favorite poem for Goodrich and Hannah Welch, 9, is called “Hannah’s Hammer.” The poem is about a girl who hits her alarm clock with a hammer when it goes off.

Welch said she learned some tips on poetry writing from Nesbitt as well.

“(I learned) that there’s a lot of rough drafts, and it’s easy to do,” she said.

Joe Bartlett, 8, said he believes Nesbitt is cool.

His favorite poem by the author is called “Last Night’s Nightmares.”

“It’s about this kid who, he had nightmares, there’s aliens who come down to Earth and they stick this brain probe up her nose, and there was this witch that cooked her in the pot, and this ogre that tied her in knots, and this dinosaur that drooled on her,” Bartlett said.

The worst nightmare of all for the girl was being in school, he explained.

Bartlett, too, said he learned about poetry writing from Nesbitt.

“(I learned) that you don’t really have to start at the beginning and go all the way through (when writing),” he said.

Fourth-grade teacher Gayle Talbot said the students in all the grade levels enjoyed Nesbitt’s presentation. Talbot said his poems have been read on the intercom and in classrooms.

She said it was the intention of the program to inspire creativity in students.