Poet Laureate speaks to middle schoolers

by JEN BIUNDO

Karla Morton is facing down an audience of several dozen middle schoolers, but the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate is up for the challenge.

“Show of hands, who doesn’t like poetry?” Morton asks.

Exchanging glances and giggling, about half the students in the Wallace Middle School gym raise their hands.

But by the time the hour is over, Morton has opened more than a few young minds to the possibilities of poetry. She draws the students out with an engaging, casual style, and in return they applaud and cheer every poem she reads.

Morton shows the kids how poetry can capture the essence of the momentous events in life, as well as the tiny or subtle moments, such as her teenage son feeling nervous before his first date.

She reads a poem about a fight with her teenage daughter – a scorching, wrenching, fiery argument over a bad report card.

“So, was there an actual fire in my house?” she asks conversationally. Most of the students call out “no,” with a few “yeses” thrown in for good measure.

“I used fire to explain how hot and hurt people get,” she tells them.

Morton asks for volunteers to sing a few bars of their favorite song, and a couple of brave students perform with gusto. The words to those songs – that’s poetry, Morton explains.

“If you like music, I gotta tell you, you like poetry,” Morton said.

Every year the governor names one writer to the position of Texas Poet Laureate, a title the poet will hold for his or her lifetime. Morton, who lives in Denton with her husband and two children, learned she had received the appointment to poet laureate last May, a year to the day after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

“When you hear about it, it’s like a kick in the gut. It’s scary, it’s hard,” Morton said. After hearing the diagnosis, Morton headed to the bookstore, but none of the books about dealing with cancer had the kind of grit and power she was searching for. So she wrote her own way through it. The result is “Redefining Beauty,” a poetry collection that will be released this week.

A year and a half after her diagnosis, Morton’s waist-length blonde hair is now a shoulder-length crop of dark curls, and she’s traveling the state visiting schools such as Wallace as part of her “Little Town” tour.

Students at the schools she visits will write a poem or create a piece of artwork about their town. Morton plans to also write a poem about each town she visits. At the end of the tour, the poem of one student from each town will be published in a book alongside Morton’s.

“I’m always trying to figure out how to bring arts and poetry to people, especially to kids,” Morton said. “Even if it’s just for an hour, to bring poetry into their lives and let them not be afraid of it.”

After hearing about the tour on NPR, Brenda Stewart, the mother of a Wallace student, contacted English teacher Erin Drees, who coordinated the event.