ink sprouts workshops can take place...

• after-school as part of an enrichment or extended-day program
• during the school day to enhance a poetry unit
• at libraries, bookstores, parks, cafes, private homes, hospitals, subway cars...
• Get in touch to explore the possibilities.

Children's Workshops

ink sprouts workshops for children stir the imagination and inspire the senses, while simultaneously strengthening skills and confidence. Taking our cues from the seasons and nature, our friends and families, our schools, our wildest dreams, and everything in between, we’ll practice experiencing the world with a poet’s eye (and ear, and nose, and mouth, and feelings). We’ll use words to celebrate, commemorate, try on different identities, play, and, most importantly, express ourselves. Participants will learn about different kinds of poetry and literary terms, and read and interpret work by award-winning contemporary poets – and, of course, write lots of poetry! 

Unlike many children’s poetry classes, ink sprouts uses “regular” poetry (as opposed to poetry written for children) as the primary text for introducing themes and concepts and inspiring children’s own writing. Over and over, we've witnessed children as young as 5 grappling with poetry by e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, and Seamus Heaney, and demonstrating sensitivity and understanding that far surpasses older students and adults.

Middle & High School Workshops

ink sprouts workshops for older kids are based on the same principles as those for children -- that offering young people the opportunity to explore "real" contemporary poetry empowers them to contemplate the big picture and develop unique perspectives and confidence in discussing literature. Adolescence is a time when many kids begin to lose a sense of wonder and fun in language -- words become bricks for building sentences and essays, rather than portals for inspiration and freedom. Poetry becomes something to be analyzed rather than enjoyed. Those who continue writing often do so secretly, and their writing suffers for lack of fresh air.

ink sprouts workshops invite older students to reclaim the poetic perspective as valid, and to refine their art and craft in a round-table workshop setting infused with mindfulness, elevated community standards, and fun. 

Billy Collins says it best in his poem "Introduction to Poetry":

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore...

From Billy Collins' “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.