Strange Terrain:   Poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader

Strange Terrain is based on the program "Entering the Realm of Poetry" Alice developed for the NH Humanties Council & has taught in many venues since.

STRANGE TERRAIN: A POETRY HANDBOOK FOR THE RELUCTANT READER fills an empty place. It is an essential resource for anyone who wants to feel more comfortable with reading poetry: individuals, reading groups, teachers, even friends and families of poets. In 8 simple steps, readers will find the tools they need to make their own confident way through poetry’s strange terrain. 

STRANGE TERRAIN PROGRAMS FOR READING GROUPS:

Strange Terrain’s 8 Steps enable participants to quickly see that they already have most of what it takes to feel comfortable with poetry. Through readings, lecture and discussions, Alice demystifies poetry and at the same time shows readers how to value the mystery that remains.

STRANGE TERRAIN PROGRAMS FOR TEACHERS:

Alice asks teachers, first and foremost, to become regular readers and learners. In this role, they can begin to forge confident relationships with poetry. Exercises and tips on how to pass the same reading process onto their students follow. Teachers may share their own poetry doubts and “traumas,” and air questions like:

What if I don’t “get” poetry myself? What am I missing when I read a poem? What makes a poem “good”? Can students find poetry relevant to their lives? Can I connect poetry to other school subjects, even non-language arts ones? How do I grade a poem, or a student’s reading of one? Will young kids like poems if they’re not funny? What measurable components can I teach, and how do I do that without poetry becoming dry and dreaded?

Rather than repeating elements teachers are already familiar with, such as alliteration, rhyme or meter, participants look at Strange Terrain’s 8 Steps for discovering greater depths in poetry by means of specific, usable, and life-affirming skills. These Steps demystify poems and help participants discover how to move through a poem, and be moved by it, without having to know, or pretend to know, what it “means.”

Finally, the programs cover where to find contemporary resources for age-appropriate poetry, how to separate students’ reading and studying of published poems from their own attempts to write poems, and how to include actual elements of poetry in other school subjects, such as science, and vice versa.