Poetry and Pedagogy across the Lifespan

This book explores poetry and pedagogy in practice across the lifespan. Poetry is directly linked to improved literacy, creativity, personal development, emotional intelligence, complex analytical thinking and social interaction: all skills that are crucial in contemporary educational systems. However, a narrow focus on STEM subjects at the expense of the humanities has led educators to deprioritize poetry and to overlook its interdisciplinary, multi-modal potential. The editors and contributors argue that poetry is not a luxury, but a way to stimulate linguistic experiences that are formally rich and cognitively challenging. To learn through poetry is not just to access information differently, but also to forge new and different connections that can serve as reflective tools for lifelong learning. This interdisciplinary book will be of value to teachers and students of poetry, as well as scholars interested in literacy across the disciplines.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- SECTION I: POETRY ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES AND MODALITIES.- Chapter 2. Push the Envelope: An Alternative to Testing and the Teaching of Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts; Jacqueline Barrios.- Chapter 3. Reading Poetry Through Dance; Vivian Delchamps.- Chapter 4. The Chemistry of Poetry and the Poetics of Chemistry; Angela Sorby and Tracy Thompson.- Chapter 5. Poetry and Accounting: Two Roads Converged in a Wood; Rich Tobin.- Chapter 6. Multimodal Encounters, with Two Case Studies in the Recovery of the Black Signifier; Jim Cocola.- Chapter 7. Resounding Text: Teaching Poetry and Sound; Tomie Hahn, Jeffrey Summit, Sean Williams.- Chapter 8. Teaching Poetry with Painting; Sandra Lee Kleppe.- Chapter 9. Pedagogies of Personhood: The Place of Lyric in Cultural Criminology; Jesse Zuba.- SECTION II. POETRY PEDAGOGIES AND THEORIES FOR THE CLASSROOM.- Chapter 10. Helping High School Readers View Challenging Texts through the Lens of Literary Theory; Hallie Richmond and April Salerno.- Chapter 11. The 'Effanineffable' Weakness of Poetry: The Duality of Bringing Poetry into the Teacher Training Classroo; Johan Alfredsson.- Chapter 12. 'Ten Fat Sausages': Poetic Sense Units, Vocabulary Chunks and Language Acquisition in Young Learners; Christina Sandhaug.- Chapter 13. Poetry and Pedagogy in Teacher Education; Heidi Silje Moen. Chapter 14. Poetry as a Tool for Reflective Practice in Teacher Education and Development; Daniel Xerri.- SECTION III. SOCIOCULTURAL BENEFITS OF TEACHING POETRY.- Chapter 15. Poetry and Pedagogy in Spanish Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582): Affirming Life Lessons for Women; Anne M. Pasero.- Chapter 16. Teaching Unlikely Poets: Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frances E.W Harper; Brian Yothers.- Chapter 17. Poetry as Intersubjective Experience; Anna Lindhé.- Chapter 18. Whatever Gets You Through the Night: Poetry and Combat Trauma; Kristin Kelly.- Chapter 19. Expanding the Turn: Using Poetry to Navigate a Post-Truth World; Conor Bracken.- Chapter 20. Conclusion.