Graduate-student teachers, whose focus is that’s okay. They get off on the sound. They get creative writing, circulate around the classroom off on the rhyme. They get off on the beats – answering questions and helping students find whatever.” the right words for their poems. Once a week for four weeks, two Eastern Cinquains are just one type of poetic form these graduate-student teachers visit a Spokane third-grade students have studied as part of the classroom for one hour. During the visits, third Triceratops Poetry Project. graders read and write various poetic forms. Led by Writers in the Community, an internship During the final week, third graders are that allows creative writing graduate students presented with a chapbook that contains one to teach writing in local settings, and Willow original poem by each student. Springs, a publishing internship that produces “They’re always really excited to see their EWU’s national literary journal, Triceratops aims to teach youth “We’re not giving them children’s verse…we’re giving them cool poems. Some of it’s over their heads, about poetry by having them read various poets and poetic forms, and that’s okay. ” n Sam Ligon as well as by writing their own Associate professor of creative writing, editor of Willow Springs poems. But they’re not reading Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein, they’re working with material by some of poetry’s heavy hitters – Mary Oliver, William names in a book,” graduate student Casey Patrick Carlos Williams and Carl Sandburg, just to name said. “We tell them, ‘You’re published authors a few. and you’re only eight years old!’” “We’re not giving them children’s verse,” said The idea for Triceratops came to Ligon after he Sam Ligon, associate professor of creative writing taught poetry to his own children’s classrooms and editor of Willow Springs. “We’re giving them when they reached third grade. The reaction he cool poems. Some of it’s over their heads, and received from the students was invigorating.
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