Retracing Memories
By David L. Harrison

There are plenty of paths to poetry but few are as accessible as retracing our own memories. When we ask students to write about something they remember, we give them the gift of choosing from events that are important enough to recall. They remember because what happened was funny or scary or embarrassing or heartbreaking or silly. They may not retain every detail, but they know how they felt, and emotion is the beating heart of poetry. A bonus of memoir writing is that students cannot be wrong about their idea. It's their memory!

How do we remember? I begin by listing my earliest recollections. When I was three, we kept a turtle in our basement. As I think about that image, others surface. When I was four, I pushed my dog off the back step. He bit me on the thumb. I'm five again, six; in middle school; high school. My list grows. I'm in a groove. Students like to reminisce, too. All you have to do is model something you remember and hands start waving.

When your students have listed a few memories, another nice thing happens: they now have choices in what to write about. Selecting the best idea from among several candidates gives young poets further ownership of their work. The way to choose is to look for potential poems hidden in memory. Like detectives nosing for clues, your students should examine each event. What's important enough about it to inspire a poem? What could I say about a turtle in my basement? For one thing, he never gave up. Day after day he walked the concrete floor, scraping against the walls, searching for freedom. I was too young then to notice his plight, but all these years later I begin to see a poem possibility.

There's always a reason why we remember something. With the passing of time comes clearer perspective that helps make our writing more honest. For primary students, the past may not be exactly ancient, but on their time scale, last year is long ago.

The first draft. We've chosen a memory. We've decided what's important about it. Now comes that dreaded first mark on paper! This is the time to remind students that we're only talking about a first draft. I bring a few manuscript pages to show how ratty my early work looks. That reassures students that forming thoughts on paper is a messy process. A first draft isn't writing; revising is writing.

For the turtle poem, my first draft was simply a series of brief statements that described my memory:

Verse or free verse? Some kids are left-handed. Some are double-jointed. Some write poetry in verse. Given a choice, students find their own way to write. Read them enough examples of verse and free verse, and they'll decide automatically how they want to write their own poem. (My first poems, at age six, all rhymed.) I don't push for one form over the other, but I do stress the need to give students the freedom to choose what works for them on a particular poem.

I wrote about my turtle memory in free verse. Then I rewrote it in verse that rhymed. In this case, I liked the verse version better. Here are three lines each from the beginning, middle and ending of the poem:

Sometimes I suggest to student poets that they write their poem in more than one form to see what works best for them. It's another way of encouraging them to stay loose and not fall in love with every word they write. Most authors go through several major overhauls of their manuscripts en route to achieving a finished product. The same is true of writing poems. The good news for students is that poems, being shorter, don't require as much time to revise and therefore provide more opportunities to experience the process of writing.

A poem worth celebrating. I grew up to become a biologist, so perhaps it isn't surprising that one of my earliest memories involves a turtle. No telling what your students will recall. Our memories are part of our root system. Writing about them, at any age, takes us on a journey back to times that helped shape us. When students reexamine their personal histories to create poetry, we are reminded that every life is itself a poem worth celebrating.

David L. Harrison is a children's poet living in Springfield, MO.

Updated December 2009
April 2005, Vol.35, No.7