At ALA there are always multiple session that I want to attend that are scheduled at the same time. Knowing that you can leave a session before it is completely over; I left the “I’m Doing Events at My Library” session with 45 minutes to go so that I could pop in on the “Poetry as a Community Builder” session. I’m so glad I did.

I buy the poetry books in the library where I work, so I wanted to go to some sessions about poetry. From the time a stepped into the room and stood against the back wall I was engaged in this presentation. I had simply hoped to pick up the handouts (they had run out of handouts), but I found myself more than a little interested in the topic The Loudoun County Public Library in Virginia is doing amazing programming with poetry as a theme. The librarian that spoke about the activities was very enthusiastic and made me want to get to work at my library.

The Loudoun County Public Library has a Poet in Residence – Kwame Alexander – who was at the session and is quite a character. He did a reading during the presentation, and another one at the Reading Stage in the Stacks. I enjoyed them both. Beyond being a poet, he is also responsible for a program entitled “Book in a Day.” To make a long (but good) story short, he went into a school and managed to get students to work through the day to organize, edit, plan, design and prepare a book for publication. These students were able to do the work and get published!! What a sense of satisfaction they must have.

I signed up to get the handouts emailed to me. They must be busy returning to their regular jobs since that hasn’t happened yet. To get you started, here are a couple of the web sites they provided: The Poetry Foundation and Poets.org.