What happens when we invite students not only to analyze a poem but to become the poem?

This is the question I return to—again and again—when I think about the role poetry plays in our classrooms. Not just in English class, but across the disciplines. In Science, Math, History, even in research methods. When we bring poetry into these spaces, we aren’t just making room for creativity—we are making space for presence. For embodiment. For students to find language for what has felt unspeakable (Cutts, 2020; Summerhill, 2020). In my NCTE article, Embracing Every Hue: Using Our Narratives to Cultivate Healing (Phelps, 2023), I wrote about the power of narrative and poetry as a form of liberation—especially for young people of color who have been asked to shrink themselves to fit into white-washed educational molds. I believe that poetry invites us—and our students—into the radical act of naming. Naming the joy. The ache. The history. The hope. Across all disciplines, this act of naming becomes a reclamation of self and story.

Poetry as Critical Methodology in Every Classroom

Poetic inquiry is more than a practice; it’s a methodology rooted in resistance. It honors what Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz (2021) calls “The Archaeology of Self,” demanding that students and educators alike excavate the layers of identity, memory, and place that inform our learning and teaching. When I invite students in a science classroom to write a poem from the perspective of a cell, or ask them to personify the periodic table, I’m not diluting content—I’m deepening it. I’m asking them to see scientific concepts as more than formulas on a whiteboard. Poetry offers language for wonder. For awe. For complexity. The student who writes, “I divide, I replicate, I hold multitudes” is learning not only cellular biology but also something about multiplicity, about existing as more than one thing.

Similarly, in social studies classrooms, poetry becomes a site for critical questioning. I’ve seen students use found poetry and blackout poems to confront primary source documents, challenging the omissions of history and unearthing voices buried in the archive. In my NCTE blog post, Exploring Identity Through Poetic Inquiry (Phelps, 2024), I shared how poetry became a bridge for students wrestling with who they are and how they have been shaped by their sociopolitical contexts. These cross-curricular moments show us that poetry doesn’t have to be contained within the boundaries of English Language Arts—it can transform every classroom into a space of inquiry, advocacy, and healing.

The House in the Sky: A Case of Multimodal Poetics

In my various courses for pre-service teachers, I use a poetic prompt called House in the Sky, inspired by Kyle Liang’s How to Build a House (2018). I ask students to imagine a home not bound by gravity—a metaphorical structure that holds their stories, traumas, dreams, and pedagogical values. It’s a practice that invites vulnerability, but also possibility. I’ve read poems from future educators about growing up in food deserts, about navigating linguistic shame, about being the first in their family to go to college. Through metaphor, these future teachers begin to name the invisible architecture of their identities. And that naming transforms how they understand their role in the classroom.

They begin to ask:

What kind of home am I building for my students?
Whose stories are centered in the curriculum?
Whose pain is ignored? Whose joy is allowed to be loud?

This is the kind of critical reflection that poetry makes possible. It isn’t just an expression—it’s excavation. It’s the start of a pedagogical stance grounded in care, criticality, cultural responsiveness, and radical honesty (hooks, 1994; Freire, 1970; Gay, 2019).

Strategies to Begin

For educators seeking to bring poetic inquiry into content-area classrooms, here are a few starting points:

• Science: Have students write persona poems from the perspective of atoms, ecosystems, or scientific innovators. Encourage metaphor to unpack abstract processes—like comparing DNA replication to musical rhythm or memory.
  
• Math: Ask students to write “I am” poems about their relationship with mathematics. Use metaphor to describe concepts like symmetry, infinity, or equations that changed the world. What does a struggle with fractions feel like? How does one narrate a moment of mathematical clarity?
  
• History & Social Studies: Use erasure or found poetry with historical documents to highlight whose voices were omitted. Invite students to write ekphrastic poetry in response to artifacts or photographs from key moments in history.
  
• Research & Inquiry: Incorporate reflective poetic journaling throughout the research process. Ask students to write poems as they collect and interpret data—honoring the emotional, ethical, and embodied dimensions of their learning (Leavy, 2015; Barone & Eisner, 2012).
  

These practices don’t detract from rigor—they reveal its humanity.

Every Hue Speaks: Radical Love & Healing

bell hooks reminded us that “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility” (hooks, 1994, p. 12). Poetry, when used intentionally, can help us tap into that possibility. It invites students to bring their whole selves into the room—their grief and their brilliance, their anger and their aspirations. As I’ve written elsewhere, poetry makes healing possible in places where pain was once unnamed (Phelps, 2024). It makes visible what dominant narratives have tried to erase. So, I leave you with this poem—an offering, a reminder, a declaration:

Every Hue Speaks
 By Darius Phelps

I am the ink that refuses to dry,
 the verse that lingers long
 after the page has turned.

I am the echo of stories
 once silenced,
 now rising—
 unashamed,
 unshaken.

Do not ask me to shrink into grayscale,
 to press my voice into the margins,
 to soften my edges so they fit neatly
 into a world that fears their sharpness.

I have seen what happens
 when color is erased,
 when tongues are taught
 to whisper instead of roar
 when truths are bent
 into palatable shapes
 for those who would rather
 not taste their weight.

But here—
 in the rhythm of our reclamation,
 in the cadence of our collective breath,
 we write ourselves whole again.

We name both the wounds & the wonders.
 We let joy & grief walk hand in hand
 We let resistance & rest sit at the same table.
 We let love carve out a home
 where erasure once stood.

This is the work.
 This is the knowing.

This is the unbreaking,
 the unfolding,
 the remembering
 of every hue—

every shade of self,
 every layered truth,
 every voice that
 refuses to be
 forgotten.

& so, we write.
 & so, we heal.
 & so, we rise—

in every hue,
 in every word,
 in every breath
 that dares to say:
 We are still here.

References (APA 7)

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts based research. SAGE.
 Cutts, Q. (2020). Poetic approaches to qualitative data analysis. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/education_pub/145/
 Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Ramos, Trans.). Herder and Herder.
 Gallas, K. (1994). The languages of learning: How children talk, write, dance, draw, and sing their understanding of the world. Teachers College Press.
 Gay, G. (2019). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
 Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. Jossey-Bass.
 hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
 Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
 Liang, K. (2018). How to build a house. Swan Scythe Press.
 Liang, K. (2024). Good son. Sundress Publications.
 Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
Phelps, D. (2023). Embracing every hue: Using our narratives to cultivate healing. Language Arts, 102(3), 199–204. https://doi.org/10.58680/la202332602
 Phelps, D. (2024, December). Exploring identity through poetic inquiry. NCTE Blog. https://ncte.org/blog/2024/12/exploring-identity-through-poetic-inquiry/
 Sealey-Ruiz, Y. (2022). An archaeology of self for our times: Another talk to teachers. English Journal, 111(5), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.58680/ej202231819
 Summerhill, D. B. (2020). Mausoleum of flowers. CavanKerry Press. https://www.cavankerrypress.org/product/mausoleum-of-flowers/

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