Exploring Poetry and Art (Ep. 413)

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Hello and welcome back to new regular episodes of Art Ed Radio. Thank you again for listening and supporting the Ask the Experts miniseries. We are really proud of that one, and we appreciate everybody listening, everybody sharing the episodes, and sharing your feedback about those episodes. We couldn’t be happier with how everything went and how many people we had listening, so thank you again.

Now as we come back today, we are celebrating Poetry Month. April is National Poetry Month, and during this month, the AOEU writers have come through in a big way. There are articles on the site about concrete poetry, about ekphrastic poems, pairings of art and poetry, spontaneous ways to use poetry in the art room, and so many more ideas. And I will go ahead and link a few of my favorites in the show notes.

And before the month is out, I wanted to sneak in one podcast episode so we can kind of join the party. Our old friend, Kyle Wood, is back on the show today. We have some catching up to do with him. I need an update, and I think everybody else wants an update on his Arts Madness tournament from last month. And we also have a lot to talk about when it comes to poetry and art, including the articles he wrote for the magazine, and I’m looking forward to discussing all of that. So let me bring him on now.

Kyle Wood, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Kyle:

I am always happy to be here. Still a little bit surprised when anyone wants to hear. I think it’s because I work in an elementary, so the idea that someone would actually care about what I have to say is still hard to accept.

Tim:

Okay, that’s fair. But you have all of these podcast appearances. You have your own podcast, which wildly popular. I know you’re now writing articles as well, so hopefully some of that will get through and lets you know that you have at least a few valuable things to say. But we just talked to you what, a couple months ago, right before March Madness/Arts Madness started, and I guess we owe the listeners an update. Can you talk about how everything went with Arts Madness this year?

Kyle:

It was wonderful as always. It is so cool to see people taking part in this thing. And I had somebody, because at one point I said, “If you’re from out of the states, just let me know when you’re filling out the prediction form, where are you coming from,” because just it’s cool to see, oh, I charted in Australia or whatever. And somebody’s like, “Yeah, and by the way, I’m from Spain.” And it’s like, “That’s so cool. This little thing has grown out of my classroom and it’s gone so far.”

The final week of Arts Madness was a super busy week. It was right around the time of deadlines and stuff like that. So I set everything to publish and then my web hosts whatever had an error. So the form didn’t publish on Sunday night or Monday like it was supposed to. And then it was like I got an email from somebody who’s like, “My middle schoolers are worried. Are you okay?” And I was like, “Yes. It was just a hosting issue, but it was resolved by Tuesday.”

The final round was super cool. I have never had this, so I always set my form to, I’ve always said voting stops at noon on Saturdays. So that was my cutoff. Saturday morning I went to check for the final round was tied between Hokusai and-

Tim:

Oh man-

Kyle:

… Van Gogh. And then by noon Hokusai came out ahead by just two votes.

Tim:

Oh my goodness.

Kyle:

The closest finish I’ve ever had, so.

Tim:

That’s wildly dramatic.

Kyle:

It was very exciting for me at least.

Tim:

I love it. I love it.

Kyle:

That was cool.

Tim:

That is really cool. So thank you for the update. I appreciate that.

I also wanted to ask you, as we mentioned, you’re now part of the AOEU writing team, and I would love to know just what kind of feedback you’ve received on your first few articles, social posts, other things that you’re putting out there. What do you want people to check out or what have been some of the reactions that you’ve gotten to things that you’ve put out there?

Kyle:

So far it’s been overwhelmingly positive. I cannot believe how many people have checked out the reels on Mondrian or my Clay article. I was so proud of that Clay article. I was a little bit worried that my Clay article, I may have peaked early in this. I used, I think probably 90% of the tips and tricks that I’ve learned over my entire career in that one article. So if you’re going to check something out, check out my …

Nothing to follow up on there.

Kyle:

But yeah, seriously, I loved that article. I was so happy with the ideas that I was able to share and put out there, and hopefully it’ll help some other people. Because I know when I was starting off, I was just always, it’s a pinch pot, it’s a vase, it’s a bowl, it’s a cup, kind of, a little wobbly, but it’ll be fine. So I found some ways that made that much more workable, and so far other people are finding that really helpful as well. Yeah, so it’s good.

Tim:

No, that’s awesome. Good, good. I’m glad to hear that. And I was just going to say, one of the things I loved about writing, one of the things I love about the podcast now is just being able to share ideas out there. Sometimes I have good ideas, sometimes I don’t, but I am able to at least put them out there into the world and hopefully they’re helping people.

Because I remember when I first started teaching, I had all sorts of ideas of what I might try and want to do but didn’t know how to do it, and I was always looking for resources. And now that I can look back and share what I’ve been through, some of these experiences that I’ve had, hopefully that can help people out who are in the situation that I was in once upon a time. And that’s just a really good feeling to be able to put that out there.

Kyle:

Very much the same. I mean, that’s actually how I came to the Art of Ed. I mean, early in my career, I started 17 years ago. Am I now a veteran teacher? Can I …

Tim:

Definitely. Okay. So Candido and I talked about this on the printmaking podcast.

Kyle:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said like 10 years, double-digits-

Tim:

I think we decided once you hit double-digit. So 17 is definitely.

Kyle:

I still feel like in some ways I have the new teacher mindset and I still go to the Art of Ed to look for ideas. But I vividly remember those early days just driving in and thinking, “What am I going to do today because I’m out of ideas? And I’ve got another month to go.” And there were a lot of days that I pulled stuff from the Art of Ed blog at that point before it was a university because I’m that old. But it’s very nice to feel like I can give something back to the site and the community I have taken so much from.

Tim:

Yeah, that’s cool. Like I said, that’s a very good feeling. And I actually want to talk a little bit more about your articles in just a second, but before we dive into that, I wanted you to kind of share with people something that you shared with me. You hit me up with some additional information, really good information by the way, after that Ask the Experts printmaking episode with Candido that we just mentioned. We had a little conversation about doing reduction prints, and I was hoping that you could share with everybody what you gave me about how you do reduction prints with elementary students.

So can you just talk through that process and share with everybody how you do reduction prints in the elementary art room?

Kyle:

Yeah, and I feel like I should credit a source, but it’s something I ripped off so long ago. I don’t know who I took it from, but-

Tim:

That’s the worst feeling in the world. You want to credit somebody where you’re like, “Oh, that was 14 years ago that I found that.”

Kyle:

Yeah. I picked up this trick where the standard styrofoam that you’re printing with, I’ve always done that. I’ve experimented with the different ways, color with the markers and do the wet thing and everything like that. But students always wanted to get a good full color print. And it was hard to do with the markers. It would come out blurry. And someone showed me that you can basically do the standard, etch it with a pencil or whatever, print it full one color, and then just cut it into a smaller stamp.

So let’s say I make a styrofoam stamp of a butterfly. I draw etch my butterfly. I would always tell students to etch a pattern in the negative space so it creates a little visual interest there. And then after they print the full stamp, usually with a lighter color, like a yellow or something like that, then they cut out the butterfly and that becomes its own stamp. Or maybe they cut out each wing separately. So they have a small collection of separate stamps that they then just print one layer on top of another. And I have successfully brought that down to first grade.

Tim:

Wow.

Kyle:

I have gotten mixed results in kindergarten. And the one thing I can tell you does not work with kindergartners is trying to do all of the reduction steps in one class period.

Tim:

Okay. Yeah.

Kyle:

I don’t know why I thought I would do that the week before spring break, but that’s how I roll. I treat a five-year-old like they’re 35 and just assume that if I know how to do it, they can do it equally well. But with appropriate pacing and everything, I was stunned with how well my students first grade and up can do it extremely well.

Tim:

Yeah, that’s awesome. And I know it’s tough for all of our visual learners to listen to those directions, but I feel like you explained it pretty well, so thank you for doing that. I think that’s good.

Okay, so like I said though, I want to jump into talk about your poetry articles. April, is it National Poetry Month? Is that correct?

Kyle:

Yes, National Poetry Month. Yeah.

Tim:

Excellent. Okay, so this is publishing at the end of the month, but we are doing something for it. So you had a couple different articles on incorporating poetry into the art room. Would love to chat just quickly about both. You had an article about ekphrastic poetry, which was a big word that I had to look up. I’m not ashamed to admit. But just like oh-

Kyle:

No shame. No shame.

It’s Greek. I mean, who knows that?

Tim:

Right? But anyway, could you explain ekphrastic poetry to our listeners and just talk a little bit about your article or talk about how you’re doing that type of poetry in the art room?

Kyle:

Absolutely. And ekphrastic I think is one of those great words that is so typical of art speak where it’s the biggest, most intimidating word to describe something simple. It’s just description. Ekphrastic poetry is descriptive. That’s all it really is. It has its ancient Greek roots and stuff, and it’s a tradition that goes back to the Iliad as Homer is describing the scenes embossed on Achilles’s shield, but it’s a description in plain speak.

There is a ton of ekphrastic poetry out there. I like Cezanne’s Ports because it’s kind of school appropriate where it’s literally just a description of a Cezanne painting where it’s like, “In the foreground we see time and life swept in a race,” and all of that sort of flowery language that what I like about it as an example to show students is it helps us to put the feeling and that response into words.

And that’s really hard for a lot of people. Even something that kind of resonates with most people at a really basic level, almost immediately I think of something like The Scream. Right away you know there’s something jarring here, but a lot of students will even be hesitant to say, “Is this scary? Is this angry? What is this?” And ekphrastic poetry, people have put it into words.

And in the article I talked about a couple examples, and I’m going to be honest, poets are miserable people. So some of them get a little dark. Always do your research, read it first, because sometimes it’s like, “Oh, this is a lovely poem about Van Gogh’s Starry Night,” and then it’s like, “Oh, this person’s talking about death.”

So sometimes you pull just a stanza of a poem. But there are some great works out there. I also like, and I feel like it’s so relatable for students, there’s a poem by Frank O’Hara that’s Why I am not a painter, and he talks about visiting Michael Goldberg’s studio and seeing a painting take shape and stuff like that, which again, it’s just another peek into the creative process and how we put these things into words.

So in the article, I talked about that as a few examples, but then also ideas about how it could work in your classroom. Maybe a poetic artist statement, because sometimes students see, “Write 500 words.” That feels like a lot. But write a poem that doesn’t even have to rhyme, I can maybe do that.

Tim:

Yeah. That’s much more accessible. Yeah, I like that. And I think I’ll just direct people to the article. There are a lot of good ideas in there. We’ll link to it in the show notes obviously, but that’s definitely something that I think is worth exploring.

And you also published an article about concrete poems, which I really like. I thought that was fun. I thought those are kind of creative. So can you talk us through those as well and just kind of share what they are and how you’re using those in your classroom?

Kyle:

So concrete poems, it’s funny, ekphrastic, I did not have to look up. Concrete poems I did have to look up when I first heard about it.

Tim:

That’s pretty ironic to be honest.

Kyle:

It was one of those things I started doing with my librarian, I don’t remember how many years ago, maybe five years ago, something like that. He brought it to me. And poetry was not really my background, so that was a new term for me. Concrete poems, what is that? And concrete, it is thinking very concretely about these poems and arranging the words to form an image that sort of brings out the meaning of the poem. So it’s taking that abstract, flowery language and making it concrete, turning it into a shape, a silhouette, something that gives us something to connect to.

And I was doing that with my students. Like I said, co-teaching with my librarian a few years ago. He pulled out some books. There’s a book of concrete poems called Wet Cement or something like that that’s absolutely beautiful and a dazzling display of dogs. Lovely vivid illustrations. But we looked at those references and then we would write concrete poems with the students.

One of the things I realized though in the process was it’s sort of engaging those students who maybe some of them feel more comfortable writing than they do drawing or the other way around. And this way you get different entry points for students to feel like they’ve got at least some skills necessary to succeed in the project. And I thought that was really good. It helped to bring in a few more students to it.

One of the other things that I learned about as I was researching for the article is how it can help. And this seems so obvious in hindsight, but I need to be told everything.

Tim:

Some of us do. That’s okay, that’s okay.

Kyle:

It can be really helpful and powerful for English learners because they’re starting to grapple with more complex language. They’re playing with language in a way. But again, it still has that concrete application, the very literal shape and everything that’s going along with it. So words and image together is very helpful for people to make some meaning and make connections.

Yeah, that’s really cool. And can be powerful. That’s really interesting. Can you give us maybe just one or two examples, just concrete poems that you’ve seen your kids create or anybody else create, I guess, that are really good, really interesting? Just kind of illustrate what you’re talking about here.

Kyle:

Okay. So for the article, I had to take pictures and stuff to go along with it. So the picture in the article is of an ice cream cone. And I have to confess, I kind of ripped it off of a nine-year-old. It was one that I didn’t literally steal it from a nine-year-old, but it was one that I saw the first time I was doing concrete poems with students. And this kid came up with this brilliant, just formed the words ice cream cone into an ice cream cone. And then the poem just was melting like drips from the ice cream cone and-

Tim:

I like it-

Kyle:

… forming a puddle at the base. And it was all about drip, drip, drip, my ice cream melts on a hot day. But I wouldn’t enjoy it if it were a cold day, so I’m just stuck with my drippy melty delight or something like that. I forget the actual words, but it was one of those ones that was just like, you’re not even at double digits yet, and you’re writing this more brilliantly than anything I’ve written in my 40 years. So yeah, that was-

Tim:

I love it-

Kyle:

… a humbling but inspiring moment that I recreated.

Tim:

Yeah, that’s really cool. I’m very curious about that. So I need to see the example. I need to go back and look at that again because I did not pay close of enough attention when I saw that article the first time.

And I guess one last thing for you, before I let you go, before we’re done talking about our poetry here, I would love to know any ideas you have about extending concrete poem ideas like taking those further, because I think there’s probably some examples of where we can go if we lean a little more into the artistry side rather than the writing side. And I’d just love to know any thoughts you have, any ideas you have on extending those or making kids do a little bit more, pushing them a little bit further with those ideas?

Kyle:

Yeah. So the obvious connection would be calligraphy. I mean those students who really like poetry and writing and text and image and stuff, calligraphy is a natural extension of that. But then there’s something, and this is a term that was also new to me at one point, I learned from, there’s a Chicago based artist, Joe Mills does this stuff. I thought he had coined a phrase or something, calligrams, it’s like calligraphy with gram in there to form an image. I guess it’s a vision that dates back to Apollinaire.

Tim:

Oh wow.

Again, this is one of those things I discovered as I was doing some research, but I’m sure everyone else is like, “Yeah, of course everybody knows this.” But it was new to me.

Tim:

I definitely did not.

Kyle:

So with Joe Mills’ artwork, what first grabbed my attention that I showed to students and they absolutely loved was he made Chicago skyline out of text. So it’s technically called the Willis Tower, but when he made it Sears Tower and just letters-

Tim:

Everybody knows it as the Sears Tower, yeah.

Kyle:

And just stretching the letters so they form each building. So it’s a very literal way of depicting every building in the city. But he did it and it was absolutely beautiful and it was mind-blowing to students because from a distance, it’s like an impressionist painting. The far and near views of it are very different. And from a distance, it’s just like it’s a cartoon skyline, what’s the big deal? And then there are these gasps as it’s like, “Oh, it says the thing. It says the Hancock, it says The Bean,” which is technically Cloud Gate, but it’s The Bean. And it was one of those things that was really eye-catching.

And it has helped my students in so many ways to get so much better at a lot of skills where you’re doing something with graphic design, you’re making a poster. Well, let’s think about how we can make those words not your normal handwriting, but turn that into a part of the art and something artful in and of itself.

So every year my local police department does a crime prevention calendar. And it’s like since I started showing Joe Mills and those calligrams and talking about this stuff and how we manipulate X, the words on the page are much better, or I’m screen printing t-shirts right now. And the designs that they came up with and the way that the words form the images and stuff are much stronger.

So I would say it’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s a really good exercise to think about. And all you have to do is start with what’s the shape, what’s the silhouette I want to create? And then how do you stretch the words, how do you stretch each letter to fill that space instead of just fitting in that space, filling the space. And they’re really surprised at how successful they can be relatively easily.

Yeah, that’s really cool. I love all of that. I love just some of those after effects, some of the appreciation that you wouldn’t think about that comes to their graphic design, their resulting work, and just seeing how that transfers. I didn’t even think about how that would work, and I love to hear that. So that’s very cool.

Tim:

All right, well, Kyle, thank you for sharing your ideas, your research, teaching me all kinds of new words. I appreciate all of it. Yeah, always great to talk to you on here.

Kyle:

Well, thank you very much.

Tim:

All right. Thank you to Kyle for that entire discussion. Loved it. I loved where we went with a lot of that stuff. And I hope his explanations and his examples give you a better idea of what’s possible and hopefully what you can do in your own art room.

And before we go, there is one more article that I wanted to mention. It’s one that Kristina Brown wrote about using poetry to help your advanced kids focus a little bit more on the art making process. There’s some really kind of cool ideas in there that I think are worth checking out. And like I said, we’ll link to some of the articles if you’re interested in reading those, finding some new ideas and exploring just a little bit more. And honestly, I hope you do. There are a lot of ideas worth looking into, a lot of ideas worth trying out when it comes to the connection between art and poetry, and some of your students just might appreciate the opportunity to do a little bit more writing.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Amanda will be back with me next week for The May Mailbag episode. We have a lot of questions already, but we would love to hear more from you. Please send any questions you have to podcasts@theartofeducation.edu or you can leave us a voice message at 515-209-2595. Thank you for listening as always, and we will talk to you again next week.