by Daniel Hatfield ’13

National Poetry Month, held each April since 1996, is intended to celebrate poetry and its place in American culture. At Sherwood, students celebrated National Poetry Month through their English classes by writing poetry with sidewalk chalk around the school.

AP Literature teacher Debbie Reier suggested the idea to English department head Shelley Jackson and Principal Bill Gregory.

“I think people don’t realize  that their life is surrounded by poetry, in terms of music, because almost everyone listens to music, music with lyrics. So, in that sense you’re dealing with poetry, and you’re enveloped in that all the time, and listening to that kind of use of language,” said Reier. “I think that if you study any language, that it is in poetry that you see writers’ most beautiful use of language and most precise use of language, because they have to get their ideas across in such a compact way. And I think you see this distillation of amazing thought in a short amount of space and time and words, and to me it’s the greatest use of language.