 My name is Damon Arundel. I am a writer and a teaching artist and I have a lesson for you today in poetry. The focus for today is list poems and we'll get into what exactly list poems are in a moment but where we're gonna start is with by making an actual list. So I want you to think about a color that you either like a lot or that you don't like a lot. And I want you to make a list of 10 different things that color makes you think of. People, places, things. It could be anything and there's no right or wrong to this. There's just what you decide. So I'm gonna go with the color red and a simple way to think about this is to just draw a circle on your page for your color and then think of it like a wheel. So for each thing that I think of in connection to my color I draw a line out to the side. So some things that come to mind for me when I think of the color red. I think of Valentine's Day. I think of blood. I think of my mom. I also think of war and I think of ice cream sundaes. Now the things on this list don't have to actually have the color. For example my mom isn't red except when she gets sunburned. So it's things that remind you of the color. They could be people, places, things, anything that comes to mind. So 10 things that your color reminds you of and I'll give you a minute or so to come up with those things. And it's okay if you pick a color that is totally different from mine. You can go with the red. You can go with something totally different that's up to you. And again it doesn't have to make sense. It could be things that have the color. It could be something that's totally different. Take another 30 seconds and then I'm going to give you some prompts to help you to come up with things that you can add to your list. Another 10 seconds. Okay. So to add to your list, even if you didn't get to 10, I want you to think of a couple things and there's no right or wrong to this. There's just what you come up with and I really want you to tap into your imagination. So often when we think of temperature, especially like when you go to the sink, there's what color is hot and what color is cold. Often we think of red as hot and blue as cold. But for this particular activity, you get to decide what your color represents. So if you decide that green is scalding hot or that green is ice cold, you're right. So make a decision. What temperature is your color? You decide. Now what season is your color? Is it spring? Is it summer? Is it fall? Is it winter? Is it somewhere in between? Is it more than one season? Again, you get to decide. There's no right or wrong. But make a decision. Let's take it even further. What time of day is your color? And you can be as specific as 3.33 p.m. or it could be the time that I get out of school or it could be when the sun goes down or it could be when my mom wakes me up for school. You get to decide what time of day is your color. Now think of media. And when I say media, I mean music. What artist or what song or what type of music comes to mind when you think of your color. But you can think beyond that. It doesn't have to be music. It could be a book, a character that you love or a movie that you've watched or it could be a video game that you've played. What type of media comes to mind when you think of your color? Take a sec to write that down. Two more prompts. What emotion is your color? What feeling comes to mind? Is your color angry? Is it embarrassed? Is it curious? Is it silly? Is it afraid? You get to decide. And again, there's not a knowing. So if your brain goes, I don't know, it's not a knowing. It's a decision that you get to make. You decide if your color is embarrassed or if your color is proud. So make a decision. And again, whatever comes to mind is the right answer. And then the last one is going to be a little bit weird. Texture. What does your color feel like if you could touch it? Is it soft? Is it hard? Is it smooth? Is it furry? Is it sharp? Is it rough? What texture is your color? Make a decision. So however many items are on your list, you've just created a list of different things that your color reminds you of. And lists are good for all kinds of different things. Lists are good for things like groceries. And lists can help us remember things. List poems follow a very specific formula. They use a lot of repetition. The beginning of every line is the same, or the end of every line is the same. And that same repetition allows us to look at things the same thing over and over again in really different ways. In the same way that when we brainstorm together, we get lots of different perspectives on the same topic. So a list poem is actually very common with any type of music that you listen to. A lot of the songs that you grew up singing are list poems. Just like I know that if I say Old MacDonald, you now have that song stuck in your head. This song that you haven't thought of in a very long time. But because you repeated it over and over again, because the lines repeat themselves over and over again, you still have that song stuck in your head. A lot of the choruses of the songs that you love are still stuck in your head because of repetition. So list poems, also known as anaphora poems. And anaphora is just a fancy word in Greek, which means list. So list poems use a lot of repetition. Again, the beginning of every line is the same, or the end of every line is the same. And we're going to look at a poem, or rather a song, and the hook of that song or the chorus of the song called Bru's Brothers by the Blue Scholars. I'm going to show you these two amazing artists. So on this side, you have you have Geologic, the MC. He is of Filipino descent. And on this side, you have Sobsi the DJ. He is of Persian descent. So I'm a really interesting mixing of cultures here. And what I love about these two is that it's old school hip hop in the sense of it's just the MC and the DJ. But I love what they've created in this particular song. And I'm just going to recite the lyrics for you and you'll be able to follow along. And you'll notice the beginning of every line is the same. The blue is for the color of the color of my mother and my father plus the scholars that we be. The blue is for the nighttime moon swinging in tune of every blue's man singing what it's like to not be free. The blue is for the water and sky in the middle of the fire I burn to find the light in the darkness. The blue is for the color of the bruise we use to be reminded that the body isn't made to be timeless. Every single uh, couplet here, every single stanza is addressing a different meaning for the color blue. The color of the color of my mother and my father. This is referencing blue collar workers. A lot of the people that we are calling essential workers right now people that work with their hands. Blue collar work are folks that do what is often referred to as manual labor manual meaning mono. The word in Spanish which means hand I lift things I build things and move things I fix things. This is talking about the hard work that manual laborers do the color of the collar of my mother and my father plus the scholars that we be. He's talking about the sacrifices and hard work his mother and father had to do so that he'd have the opportunity to go to college. Just that from the color blue another potential meaning from the color blue the nighttime moon swing in tune of every blues man singing what it's like to not be free. Often we think of blue as a sad color. Where did that come from? The music form that we know of or genre that we know of as the blues. We'll think about what's one of the saddest things that has ever happened in our country slavery. The songs that enslaved Africans sang while working in the fields were called Negro spirituals. They were about hardship and suffering. Those songs evolved into the blues. One of our oldest original art forms. And those songs have evolved into lots of different styles but the blues is the heart and soul of American music. So another thing that a lot of people don't know in regards to the blues is when they were singing those songs it wasn't just look up at the moon it wasn't just this sadness it was also a way to pass on information that was vital for the underground railroad. So then when they would say things like look at the moon when it's in this part of the sky it was about giving directions on how to get free. So this music has a tremendous amount of history to it. Again a lot of meaning behind the color blue a separate meaning. For fire and water think about where have you seen where have you seen blue fire before? Probably on a gas stove because fire or the flame changes color depending on what you're using to fuel it. And then my favorite line the color of the bruise we use to be reminded that the body isn't made to be timeless. What bruises teach us? They remind us that we're not going to be here forever that we only have but so much time that we can get hurt that we're not invincible. So we have four different messages here four different possible meanings from the color blue and we could go in lots of different directions. So what I'm going to have you do is make use of your list and the style that the blue scholars have come up with to create our own poem our own list poem. So I encourage you to stick with the color that you picked and you're going to use a similar structure that the blue scholars use but instead of the blue is four you're going to say my blue is four or whatever color you've picked my yellow is four my red is four my green is four you're going to follow this similar structure. So the first line is my name is and you plop in your name so in my case my name is Damon. The second line my blank is blank and in those blanks you put my color is and then you need a descriptive word or phrase to describe your color maybe your blue is sad maybe your green is powerful maybe your white is illuminated maybe your yellow is a lightning strike maybe your purple is a baby's cry it could be anything that you want and here's another thing if you get stuck on that line skip it and come back to it the last thing that I want is for you to be sitting there I'm not sure what the right thing to write is the way that I think about it if you're writing you're doing it right so feel free to skip lines and come back to it don't let yourself get stuck so from there you're going to use that similar repetition I picked the color purple mine goes like this my name is Damon my purple is playful my purple is for the sunsets I reach for when I climb trees my purple is for the paints on the walls in the halls I walk past while kids laugh and tell stories my purple is for royalty and riches for kings and queens and the treasures I will never have and your color can also express whatever it is that you're feeling right now in the moment something that isn't on your list maybe you drew a blank as soon as I said what is your color representing maybe your color is my purple is for the blank stare on my face when my mind goes blank because my stomach is empty and all I want is to stuff my face it could be about anything you wanted to be and it can go in lots of different directions so I'm going to give you all about 10 minutes to write your own and again first line my name is blank second line my color whatever color you pick my yellow my green my purple my blue is and then a descriptive word or phrase to describe that color and then that following repetition my purple is for my purple is for my purple is for what I encourage you to do is to not write one word responses to be descriptive so notice I didn't just say my purple is for sunsets my purple is for royalty I elaborated on those things go back to your list use it as much or as little as you like and that is going to help you to create your own list poem so take a few minutes dive on in and again as far as I'm concerned if you're writing you're doing it right so if you slide into a different direction than the template or the structure that I've given you and you're still writing that's fantastic why because you're still creating you're still being expressive and you're still coming up with something so whatever direction you want to take this in is the right thing okay so take a few minutes I'm going to do a little bit of writing myself and we'll see what we come up with much or as little as you like it's just describing how you feel describing what you're thinking about don't worry about whether it makes sense or not it's just an opportunity for you to say what you're thinking and what you're feeling in some different ways I'm gonna stop here I'm gonna share a little bit of what I came up with and hopefully you'll take some time to share with someone around you uh whether it's right now later tonight or tomorrow my blue is for silence that feels like too much my blue is for a world that is too much and not enough my blue is for bright lights and warm eyes my blue is for a blank piece of paper that stares back at me my blue is for the faces on the other side of the world my blue is for the darkness that I don't get to see my blue is for running out of time thank you for writing with me I appreciate it and I hope you have a great day