Camarillo, Calif., March 24, 2015 – CSU Channel Islands (CI) School of Education lecturer Mary Kay Rummel, Ph.D., will lead a group of poetry lovers around Old Town Camarillo on Tuesday, March 24, posting children’s poems.
“Several of us from the Ventura County Arts Council will be taking these poems into businesses in Old Camarillo and a few other sites to get them posted in the community in time for National Poetry Month, which is April,” Rummel said. “Last year, 20 businesses participated. This year we hope to have more.”
Besides teaching at CI, Mary Kay Rummel is also Ventura County’s first-ever Poet Laureate, so she wants to encourage poetry appreciation to all ages by getting poems out into the community.
The poetry was written by students at Tierra Linda Elementary School and University Preparation School in Camarillo.
With cooperation from teachers, 32 of Rummel’s students who are getting credentialed to teach elementary school visited the classes and helped the kids compose poems.
“They are wonderful poets with their openness to language and to breaking the rules,” Rummel said. “That’s what they love about poetry is they don’t have to follow the rules they’ve learned about writing.”
University Preparation School fourth grade teacher Janet Kent said each CI student teacher taught four or five kids some poetry basics and within an hour, kids who usually didn’t write had penned funny, tender and always honest poems.
“It opens up these kids who don’t particularly want to write,” Kent said. “One year there was a little boy who had been adopted and he thanked his family for adopting him at nine. It made me cry. It was a treasure.”
Excerpts from some of this year’s poems were:
“Some days I’m different colors
But today I feel orange.
Orange makes me excited.
When I feel excited, you better back away.”
—Grade 4 student, Tierra Linda Elementary
“My biggest pet peeve is that my neighbor’s dog
Barks all the time.
It’s as terrible as having P.E.
Which makes me sweat.
It’s worse than when soccer is canceled.”
—Grade 4 student, Tierra Linda Elementary
“My ears are round and curvy.
With my ears I look astonishing.
My ears are flat and crinkled.
My ears are sometimes green
Always getting mad
So my ears are always in flame.”
—Grade 4 student, University Preparation School
The Ventura County Arts Council members will meet at 11 a.m. at Studio Channel Islands Art Center at 2222 Ventura Boulevard in Camarillo, and visit area businesses distributing poems until 3 p.m.
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