“Let Them Play With Words”: Kids Discover Interview with Children’s Poet, Matt Forrest Esenwine

National Poetry Month is in full swing, and as an educator, you may be wondering what value poetry has in your classroom.  Kids Discover had the opportunity to discuss this reflection – and many more – with award-winning children’s poet, Matt Forrest Esenwine!  

The Interview

Why is poetry important for young students?
For a wide variety of reasons!  Poetry by its very nature is a distilling of thoughts, emotions, scenes, and images – you can say a lot in a small amount of space.  Writing a poem is an enjoyable way of looking at things differently.  Writing poetry is playing with words; students are putting poetry together, but with a playful mindset.  Students are also learning a wide variety of ELA skills – comparing and contrasting, point of view, figurative language, critical thinking, new vocabulary…there are so many skills to be learned through reading and writing poetry!

For teachers who feel intimidated by poetry, what would you say is the simplest way to begin incorporating it into their classroom?
First off, I’d say “I’m sorry you were possibly taught to hate poetry!”  When many of us were in school, we were taught to read a Shakespearean sonnet, which is fine, but to get someone truly interested in poetry, it has to be something the students care about.  Edgar Allan Poe, for example, brings up intriguing topics people of all ages find captivating; or contemporary poets like Carl Sandburg, with poems such as “Fog” that describes things as simple and relatable as “fog” and “cats” with beautiful language – The fog comes in on little cat feet.  It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. 

Also, try to spur the joy of reading poetry in the classroom – poetry shouldn’t be made out to be so difficult.  It can be a fun, performative endeavor as well!   Poetry should be made accessible to children – and it is!  When we reduce it to an academic pursuit, that’s the problem.  That is where poetry goes from being something intriguing to something laborious.

Many teachers feel pressure to “cover content.” How can poetry be used not as an extra, but as a meaningful way to teach core subjects?
It’s wonderful to be used as an extra, and it is also wonderful to be used as a way to teach all subjects!  My personal example of teaching science is through my poetry collection Universe of Rainbows: Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2025).  This book is a great way of introducing STEM and science and poetry all at the same time!  The poems and the sidebars are not “extra” – they’re all one – a combination of learning and art.  With books like this, the kids who are into science get to experience poetry, perhaps in a way they hadn’t before – and the kids who love poems and playing with words are introduced to science in an unexpectedly fun and creative way.  There are plenty of collections out there that include different topics, different educational subjects, combined with poetry.  The combination of poetry and subject matter helps students see things in a different way. 

Also, let’s not forget how poetry can help us improve our writing.  All of the poetic devices that we can think of can strengthen everyone’s writing, from informative, to opinion pieces, to narratives and more.  Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Other Genres (Heinemann, 2017) by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is a book designed for educators – a resource for teachers to guide them on using poetry to teach writing skills.  It is amazing, and extremely useful for teachers.

What role does choice play when it comes to helping students connect with poetry? Should teachers lean more toward classic poems, contemporary voices, or student-created work?
All of it is good – structure, free verse, student choice.  I learned structure before anything else.  For some students, they want structure, they need the structure when approaching the idea of writing a poem.  For other students, they like the freedom to be able to write what they want, and how they want.  In my experience, my focus on structure delayed my ability to write better poetry because I ended up prioritizing rhyme, rhythm, and all that other stuff over emotion and feeling. That’s why I tend to encourage free verse when I teach students, so they can focus solely on their ideas and subjects and not worry about rhyme and meter.

When teaching poetry workshops, I don’t worry about rhyme at all; I want students to learn to understand their subject.  I want them to ask a lot of questions.  If you are the leaf, what were you thinking?  What’s your story? Where did you come from?  Where is your family?  Variety is great when introducing poetry to students.  And some classics are very important to introduce, but contemporary poetry for kids is accessible to everyone.  Find great poems and poets of contemporary poetry for kids and you’ll have students excited and ready to write!

What’s one poetry activity or lesson that you’ve seen truly “click” with students – something teachers could try right away during Poetry Month?
I created a lesson called MBOE – “Most Boring Object Ever.  I have students brainstorm what is the most boring topic you can think of – something so boring that it would be tremendously difficult for anyone to be interested in it – and then write about that topic in a way that excites you and your reader!  For example, a pebble at the bottom of the ocean, or a dust bunny, or even a used Band-Aid!  What is the most boring object you can think of that you couldn’t possibly write about?  We are going to write about it!

What I am teaching here, trying to get across to the students, is that the most important aspect of writing poetry is understanding your subject.  You need to really find out what it is about that subject – thing, person, or feeling – that makes it worth writing about.  Once you’ve got a handle on it, then you can actually start writing on it. The writing process isn’t all about writing – often it’s thinking.  More often than not it needs to be more about thinking than writing.  I might take 45 minutes to write a poem, but I could have been thinking and researching about that same topic for three weeks!

Educators can also introduce students to the “cherita”, a very simple poetic form in which students can have a lot of fun writing, with no pressure at all.  The cherita is a poem with three stanzas: a one-line stanza, a two-line stanza, and a three-line stanza.  It usually tells a story.  There is no rhythm, no rhyme, and no syllable count – it is about as close to free verse as you can get, except with some small rules about its size.  

What are some practical strategies teachers can use to make poetry more engaging and less intimidating for students?
Don’t treat it so academically.  It should be enjoyable. The academic part is reading it for comprehension – what do you think the poet is trying to say – but it is also as much of an art form as it is an academic pursuit.  Let your students see that it is something to enjoy!

Do students benefit more from structure first, or freedom first, when they begin writing poetry?
This goes back to the question about how to simply incorporate poetry into the classroom.  What benefits students more regarding poetry can depend on the student.  Some people love structure – like me as a kid!  Once I blended the two worlds of structure and freedom, I realized poets ask themselves: who are you writing to, and what am I writing about?  Help students know their topic, and consider their audience, and let them choose the type of poetry they want to write.  There is a poetic toolbox out there for everyone and everything.

If you had to design the ideal poetry unit, what would come first – and what would you make sure students walk away with at the end?
Introduce different types of poetry, different forms, and poems about different subjects – some with rhyme, some concrete poems. Introduce different ways of writing poems.  Show students what poetry is and why it is so fun, and express your enjoyment.  When writing, help students understand that the most important thing is understanding one’s subject.  And help them to focus on developing a new way of thinking and observing – how to look at topics in a different way.  These are great goals to have when introducing students to poetry.

What are some simple strategies for helping students who are struggling to start writing their own poems?
Start off by having students write a color poem.  A color poem gets students thinking like a poet.  It teaches them to use the senses.  I recently had a group of students that came up with the color “light blue” to write about – not sky blue, not baby blue, not navy blue…light blue.  So I asked them, “What tastes like light blue?  What can you smell that is light blue?  What sounds like light blue?”  Struggling students, and young students, can easily approach this strategy and be successful.  I get struggling students to think, “What is a way you can compare the senses to the color?”  And this can lead students to continue to think, “What is a way I can compare the senses to other things?”

If you had to convince a room full of skeptical students that poetry is actually cool, what would be your opening line?
I would read them the first page of The Crossover (Clarion Books, 2014) by Kwame Alexander.  I don’t even have to think of the answer.  The opening is like the opening scene of a movie – you are instantly in the action.  Opening that first page is like opening the curtain to a subject and action that kids are going to connect with and gravitate toward.  It has rhythm, rhyme, line breaks, onomatopoeia – all of that in one singular poem.  It’s a basketball player who gets the ball, goes to the hoop, and makes the basket – that’s all there is, but it is so much more in how the poem is written.  It is an incredible poem that can totally draw anyone into poetry.

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A Little More About Matt Forrest Esenwine

Matt Forrest Esenwine is the author of more than a dozen children’s books including the Kirkus-starred Flashlight Night (Astra Young Readers, 2017) and I Am Today (POW! Kids Books, 2022)., which received the 2023 NH State Literary Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. Meanwhile, his poetry can be found in books like his 2026 NCTE Notable poetry anthology, A Universe of Rainbows (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2025), and The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry (National Geographic Kids Books, 2015), among others. Learn more about Matt Forrest Esenwine at MattForrest.com.

More books from Matt include:

• Don’t Ask a Dinosaur (POW! Kids Books, 2018) – A humorous rhyming picture book that playfully warns children not to ask dinosaurs for help, as their attempts lead to chaos and comedy.
• The Thing to Remember About Stargazing (Tilbury House Publishers, 2019) – A poetic reflection on observing the night sky, encouraging curiosity, wonder, and a deeper sense of perspective about our place in the universe.
• Once Upon Another Time (Beaming Books, 2021) – A creative and humorous mash-up of classic fairy tales, where characters cross into each other’s stories, resulting in playful confusion and fun!
• A Beginner’s Guide to Being Human (Beaming Books, 2022) – A thoughtful, poetic guide to emotions, empathy, and what it means to be human, making it especially useful for social-emotional learning.
• Everybody Counts! (Little Fig, 2023) – A creative foreign language counting picture book that teaches readers how to count to 10 in twelve different languages including Arabic, Swahili, Greek, and Navajo.
• Construction People (Contributor, 2020) – An anthology of poems about construction workers and building, featuring Esenwine alongside other prominent children’s poets.

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How Poetry Can Benefit Our Students (not just in April):

• It Can Increase Their Joy of Learning
  • There are poems written on a myriad of topics, written in a variety of ways, that are easily accessible to students of all ages and backgrounds.  Poems can bring to life the joy of learning about a specific subject, and they have the capacity to bring the joy of learning about poetry itself!

• It Can Increase Their Writing Abilities
  • As mentioned in Matt’s interview above, the skills needed to write poetry can assist students with improving their writing across all genres.  Whether using figurative language, comparing and contrasting, writing different points of view, or accessing some other language arts skill when writing a poem – all of them have the capacity to help a student improve their writing!

• It Can Increase Their Reading Abilities
  • It can be difficult to understand what a poet is writing about, especially when the poet might not have known exactly what they were writing about!  However, smaller chunks of literature like poetry lend themselves well for the opportunity for students to practice their reading comprehension skills in non-intimidating ways.  As students practice understanding what poems mean, they can enhance their reading skills, which then easily carries over into understanding other texts.  Poetry is great for reluctant readers – poems are short, with white space, and can be less intimidating than an entire page (one of the reasons verse novels are so popular)!

• It Can Increase Their Content Knowledge
  • There are a plethora of poems out there that focus on different subjects – from ecology to astronomy to history to social emotional learning topics and so much more!  The next time you are starting up a specific unit in your classroom, find poems written about that topic.  Poetry can be a remarkable way to spark your students’ interest in whatever you are teaching!

• It Can Increase Their Vocabulary
  • While you don’t want to introduce poetry to students that contains a lot of archaic vocabulary, or language that is way above their reading level, as an educator, you do have an amazing opportunity to improve your students’ vocabulary by reading poems.  Poets have an amazing way of bringing language to life, and when reading through shorter texts – like poems – students are less reluctant to explore what specific words mean in order to understand the content.  Reading poetry can enhance a student’s vocabulary knowledge easily and enjoyably!

• It Can Increase Their Creativity
  • Writing poetry can bring out a creative side of a student that they didn’t know they had!  The way in which a poem can be written is almost endless, which is of great benefit to any student.  If a student likes structure, there are numerous forms of poetry from which to choose from.  If a student likes the freedom to write what they want, how they want, then free verse is available to them!  And if a student likes the lyrical aspect of poetry, then rhythmic / rhyming poetry is an excellent option.  Writing poetry requires a specific way of thinking about a topic – as Matt Forrest Esenwine expressed above – and that way of thinking can bring out the creative juices in anyone!

• It Can Increase Their Confidence
  • Writing poetry doesn’t need to be just an academic pursuit, and it doesn’t have to stand alone as a creative endeavor only.  It can be both of those things, but it can also be a way for a student to express themself in a way they haven’t before.  The act of creating something great – like a poem – can build emotional confidence, academic confidence, and artistic confidence!  It can also enhance self-reflection, which is a healthy action that has the ability to help anyone grow their self-esteem.  Building a poem can build confidence, for sure!