Shortlisted for the United Kingdom Literary Association (UKLA) Academic Book Award 2023

A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers generates imaginative encounters with poetry and invites educators to practice a range of poetry exercises in order to inform instructional approaches to reading and writing. Guided by pedagogical principles prompted by their readings of Wallace Stevens' “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Maya Pindyck and Ruth Vinz provide critical discussion of prominent literacy practices in secondary classrooms and offer alternative approaches to encountering a text. They do this by way of experimental readings of Wallace Stevens' poem toward a set of thirteen pedagogical principles that anchor a pedagogy of poetic practices. The book also offers invitational exercises, the authors' own engagements with poetry practices, as well as student examples, visual modes of theorizing, and a gathering of relevant resources compiled by two classroom teachers. This is a book for secondary English teachers, teaching artists, English educators, college writing professors, readers and writers of poetry – both existing and aspirational – and any educator interested in poetry's capacities to pedagogically inform their subject matter and/or literacy practices.

Maya Pindyck is Assistant Professor and Director of Writing at Moore College of Art and Design, USA.

Ruth Vinz is Morse Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA.

Diana Liu and Ashlynn Wittchow are doctoral students at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. They contributed to the book's Resources section.