Poetry 180

An idea devised by former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, Poetry 180 is an initiative to help integrate more poetry into our schools.  The name is two-fold, according to Mr. Collins.  The first is that 180 poems are available, to approximate the number of days in a school year, but also that students can reverse their thinking by 180 degrees towards poetry, eventually embracing and loving the form.

The ideal way to integrate this site is to have a poem read aloud each day, maybe as part of the announcements, to have every student exposed to something new.  If that is not feasible in the school, there is no reason why a single teacher could choose one poem to read in English class, for example, each day as a warm-up activity or to have the poem posted in a common area of the school, such as the cafeteria or library.

Another idea for these is to use the 180 poems as a bank for your class to analyze for a poetry lesson as well.  Remember though, most of these poems are till copyright protected and have allowed use exclusively for the purpose of the Poetry 180 program and in schools.  Do not reproduce or use them in any way that would violate the original copyright.  Contact information for all the poets is available, so please use it if you would like to use the poems presented for another purpose.