Meg Gabbert Makes Poetry Interactive

Writer Mag Gabbert first fell in love with poetry in college. 

Since then, Gabbert has gone on to be an extremely successful poet, having been published in multiple journals and books. However, Gabbert explained during her LitFest presentation that she wishes she had started earlier on in her life. One of the main reasons she chose to host a workshop was to connect adolescents to their passion early on. 

To start off, Gabbert passed out a piece of paper, telling the group not to touch or flip it over. If this had been any other speaker, I would have gotten distracted and just read the handout, however, Gabbert had a way of keeping me engaged. 

On the board, she had written a well-known poem: “roses are red, violets are blue, honey is sweet and so are you.” Gabbert asked the audience what they thought about the poem and by the end of the discussion it had become clear that most of the group agreed the poem was overused and boring. 

To fix this, Gabbert had the students change it by calling on them to change a word, a meaning or a whole sentence. Everyone got involved and was interested and eventually the whole poem was changed. 

Throughout the process, Gabbert kept her audience engaged through her humor. She cracked jokes about her height, hair and life outside of poetry. It helped her to come off as more human and to calm down some of the pre-presentation jitters. 

In addition to this, Gabbert held everyone’s attention by asking questions and treating the audience as her equals throughout. When students asked a question, Gabbert took her time responding to them and would speak directly and smoothly. 

When I asked her a question, she answered it while making eye contact with me, so it felt more like a conversation with a family member than a presentation you were required to go to for English class.

Next came the most interesting part. The handout. 

We were finally allowed to flip it over and when we did, we came across a list of fill-in-the-blanks. We filled them in, but were told not to do anything else. 

I was dying to know what was on the next page, but Gabbert wouldn’t let us look until everyone was done. 

When we flipped the page we found iconic poems and stories. We all chose one and filled in our blanks like a Mad Lib, but Gabbert had found a way to keep everyone engaged in the simple activity. She started by reading her own out loud to ease everyone else into being able to read their poem out loud. 

When she asked for a volunteer, my hand was in the air. I didn’t even think about it, I was having such a good time. I filled out parts of the story of the Iliad, but this time, instead of being a story of grand adventure, it was a story of ice cream, cows and jack hammers flying. 

Throughout her presentation, Gabbert connected with the room by using her humor and her expertise. By the end, the whole room was laughing and smiling and I left the workshop truly hoping Gabbert would return next year, so that other students would have the same wonderful experience as I did.