Poetry Month at Longmont Public Library
Ahhh, April…. when poets emerge from our winter perches! Shortly after joining the team at Longmont Public Library in beautiful Longmont, Colorado, I took the initiative to develop and lead all Poetry Month programming for Children’s and Teens’ Services (CATS). My programming offered something for youth of all ages. Scroll below the slideshow for an overview of the five programs I created. The incredible CATS team at Longmont Public Library helped make each part of this happen.
View the slideshow below to see all five programs in action, plus some of my behind-the-scenes prep.
Poetry for young people from 0-18
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My Poetry Month programs at Longmont Public Library
a teen poetry writing workshop (all 13 teen participants reported in a survey tthat they would recommend the workshop to a friend!),
a special poetry month edition of Tween Club (with 19 tweens in attendance),
a special Family Storytime for Poetry Month (with 51 people in attendance),
a poetry-themed book display for ages 0-18, with books ranging from board books and picture books to biographies and YA novels-in-verse, including many Spanish-language books. These books help meet the needs of the people of Longmont, where 1 in every 4 people are Latino/x.
and a month-long, hands-on, passive program called POETRY CATS, that invites children and teens to try their hand at writing a poem.
More about the “POETRY CATS” program
The POETRY CATS program has been a blast! It’s brought great joy to be on the desk and see young people of all ages, and sometimes their grown-ups, pencil poems at our interactive table stations or elsewhere around the Children’s and Teens’ Services (CATS!) Area or dedicated Teen Space, and feed them to the cardboard POETRY CAT. One young person brought their poem up to the reference desk with pride. There was the teen that wrote a series of sweet and funny “animal librarian” poems for each of us working the desk, and recited them in rhyme.
The program consists of two interactive table stations: one in our dedicated Teen Space and another in the main Children’s area. Some of the photos above document our windows filling up with poems throughout the month… with the beautiful Colorado sun shining through behind them!