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Just like any other artist, poets need the opportunity to gather their materials at the start of the writing process. Of course, they may already have their pen and paper ready, but young writers may be at a loss regarding the material that should be brought into the poem itself. Because of this, students often rely on familiar topics and themes, such as relationships or scuffles during gym class. While these expressive topics are perfectly fine for poems, students’ proximity to their subject can cause them to focus more on the message than on the experimentation and formal decisions in the poem.

Since node poems require formal experimentation that relies on quantities of material that a reader can navigate and explore, give your students several assignments that allow them to gather their materials at the start of the node poem writing process. This short list of pre-writing assignments helps your students create enough material so that the actual process of writing is made easier.

While your students generate material for their node poems, they focus less on what to express and more on how best to convey the language. These engaging activities also open them up to new ways of composition.

This section contains suggested rules, assignment sheets, and templates for the creation of a complete node poem. Encourage your students to synthesize all of their pre-writing material into node form.

How can writers be confident that their work is reader-ready without testing out a beta version first?