Pursuing the Paranormal at WPL

By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Reporter

For the Halloween season and to get the people of Westwood to look at the art of poetry in a more fun way, Westwood Poet Laureate Beth Swinning set up a Pursuing the Paranormal workshop at Westwood Public Library (WPL). What better way to lean into the holiday than with paranormal poetry?

With the title of Poet Laureate, Swinning says her goal is to get other people doing poetry. In her day job as librarian at Martha Jones Elementary school, she tries to make it as fun as possible.

“People learn about poetry through Shell Silverstein, then they forget how fun it can be.” Swinning said. After childhood, poetry in academics can leave people feeling indifferent or downright dislike it. She wants to turn that around and remind people of the creativity poetry can bring out in you.

This workshop was an engaging way to bring poetry back into people’s lives. Swinning set up different stations around the room, each themed with a different style of poetry. The first one in the door was Bewitching Black Out Poetry. The idea behind it is you take a passage of text, for this it was spooky stories, and pick out the words to create your own poem. Then you take a marker and literally black it out! The result looks slightly spooky, and can lead a wildly different story than the initial text.

Next was the Frightening Fortune Tellers. The idea behind it was the same as those fortune tellers typically made in the back of classrooms when kids are bored, the square you put your fingers in and spell out your favorite color. Only this time instead of colors, you thread the words together from each fold and create the start of a themed poem!

There was also the Alarming Acrostics, where different Halloween themed words were laid vertically on the page and you could come up with a different word for each. These are prime examples of where creativity can shine. The topics of each poem can range; one little girl decided she wanted to write about Hogwarts so, she did!

Lastly there was the Roll-A-Poem. The prompts for different styles of poems, central characters, themes, and more were on a sheet each with a different number, and it was up to chance! You could roll the dice to decide your poem’s destiny and create it from the suggestions. Everything came out so unique and showed the basic simple ideas can inspire so many different things for different people. Poetry can be an amazing creative outlet, and Swinning showed that with her paranormal workshop.