Wham! It's a Poetry Jam

by Sara E. Holbrook

Overview

Take a wild ride with poet Sara Holbrook as she guides young writers in performing their poetry with style and pizzazz. With enthusiasm and a touch of irreverence, Ms. Holbrook, a performance poet herself, explains how to use voice, rhythm, attitude, movement, and other techniques to perform poetry in a group, duo, or solo. More than thirty poems are included for young readers to practice, as well as instructions for putting on a poetry jam at school or in the community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629792774
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	09/29/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	AD770L (what's this?)
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Sara Holbrook is the author of Nothing's the End of the World, The Dog Ate My Homework, I Never Said I Wasn't Difficult, Am I Naturally This Crazy?, Which Way to the Dragon!, and Walking on the Boundaries of Change, all published by Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press. She lives in Mentor, Ohio.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	7
	Introduction	8
	Twist and Shout--Get Your Poetry Out
	Toot Your Own Horn	11
	Call and Response--a Class Act	12
	Playing Catch with Words	14
	You've Got Rhythm	15
	Up and at 'Em	17
	Voice Your Attitude	20
	You Are Entitled to Your Point of View	22
	Set Poetry in Motion	24
	Two's Good Company, but a Crowd Is Loud	26
	Going Solo	28
	Developing a Split Personality	32
	Two Characters in One	35
	Get Ready to Wham
	A Word (or Two) About Contests	37
	Ready, Set, Perform
	Creating Poems for Multiple Voices	42
	Merging Unlike Poems	45
	Perform On	48
	The Final Act	54
	A Note to Poetry Jam Coordinators	55

Editorial Reviews

Using over 30 of her own poems as a guide, Sara Holbrook teaches readers how to present poetry with rhythm, movement and a strong voice in Wham! It's a Poetry Jam: Discovering Performance Poetry, with a foreword by Jane Yolen. Much of her advice is geared to teachers; guidelines and advice for organizing a poetry "wham" appear midway. (Apr.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 2-5-The author of Walking on the Boundaries of Change (1998) and The Dog Ate My Homework (1997, both Boyds Mills) presents some of her poems along with tips on how to perform them. She explains how to move, how to put emotion behind the words, and how to make rhythm affect the performance in notes at the beginning of each poem, and occasionally in short, chatty captions at the end. Her instructions are easy to follow, although they often feel like lessons ("Can you think of some achy-breaky movements to put with this poem?"). She's also not consistent in the way she talks about voice projection-in two places she mentions volume or loudness, while later she explains that it's actually the strength of the voice, not its volume, that carries. The poems themselves vary in appeal, as they range from the goofy ("The dog ate my homework. You've heard that before? This one ate the table, then chewed through the door") to the righteous ("I'm not on your track, and my whistle is fixin' to scream. I'm warning you, Jack. Peer pressure just makes me get steamed"). Though not illustrated, the book has an inviting, colorful design with stars and spirals in pastels all over each page and text set on blocks of color, matching the energy in Holbrook's voice. Some readers will find this offering too teacherly and "for kids," but younger poets and adults may enjoy her suggestions on how to produce a poetry jam.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Guaranteed to get even confirmed classroom drones out of their seats and into an audience's face, this high-energy manual is a poetry slam-dunk, combining plenty of easy practice pieces—"The guinea pig has fleas, / there are grass stains on my knees, /AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT?"—with pithy advice about voice, gesture, rhythm, and other aspects of solo, paired, and choral performance. Except for a closing note to adult "coordinators," Holbrook (Walking on The Boundaries of Change: Poems of Transition, 1999) addresses young "jammers" directly, delivering a mix of practical tips and inspirational exhortation, inviting experimentation with the original examples she provides, emphasizing that attitude and technique are equally important, and finishing with suggested rules for poetry competitions. Glazner's Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry (2000) remains the older slammer's bible, but younger readers looking for ways to get poetry "from the page to the stage" will get plenty of help here. (Nonfiction. 10-15)

Kirkus Reviews

* "Guaranteed to get even confirmed classroom drones out of their seats and into an audience's face, this high-energy manual is a poetry slam-dunk. . . ." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher