Poets House Workshop with Richard Lewis

On Saturday, Mikro and I visited Poets House for a workshop with poet/educator Richard Lewis called "Wind, Ice & Other Tremblings of Winter."

It was fantastic. Richard Lewis is warm and engaging, and paints beautiful images with his words. He started off with the story of a dream, using props and involving the kids. Each child was given a printed snowflake, a special magical "wind pencil", construction paper, chalk, and a view-frame to look at the snowflake more carefully. They could draw or write about their snowflake, Richard's dream, or their own dream. Each child was given a cloud foam mat to sit on in their own special place around the room. Mikro scampered under a stack of chairs, drew something (he lost his drawing before I got to see it), and wrote a short, simple poem:

Winter, snow, ice.
Kids play.

He was happy to stand up and share it.

I wrote a poem too, and tried to get away with having Mikro read it for me... But I ended up reading it myself. (How did a pair of introverts like me and Kev ever manage to produce an exuberant performer like Mikro, I wonder?)

Winter unwraps her gift of ice,
Wrapped in blankets of snow,
Dresses the trees in diamonds,
That dance as the cold wind blows.

Afterwards, Mikro was desperate to visit the Children's Reading Room, where there were all sorts of puppets to play with, and old fashioned typewriters to compose poems on, and a bunch of kids to do it with. I finally managed to get him to sit and read a book of poems about bugs. They were funny, and he really enjoyed the poems for two voices. And I had the opportunity to set up a couple of class visits to Poets House for our homeschool group for after the holidays...