The Nebraska Writing Project has long been committed to place-based writing. Poetry of Place is a project that reflects life in Nebraska through poetry. The purpose is to encourage Nebraska students to engage with their places through writing poetry and to make that writing more visible.
"If you can awaken inside the familiar and discover it new you need never leave home."
Ted Kooser in Local Wonders
Nebraska is fortunate to have many poets whose work celebrates local place, such as Ted Kooser, Bill Kloefkorn, Twyla Hansen, Matt Mason, Allison Hedge Coke, Kwame Dawes, Marjorie Saiser, and many other poets whose poetry can be read by students as examples of poetry of place.
Writing Prompts & Lesson Plan Resources
As writing inspiration, here are some place-based writing prompts and lesson plans from Poetry on the Plains and National Writing Project’s Write Out:
- Family Museum: Poems That Tell Our Stories
- Field Journaling: The Plains Through My Eyes
- Illustrating Poetry: An Imagery Exercise
- Painting the Seasons with Poems
- The Language of Deep Time: Loren Eiseley’s “The Innocent Assassins” and the Science of the Prehistoric Plains
- So This is the Plains
- State Poet Study
- Nature’s Toolbox: Prompts
- Layers of the Land: Prompts
- Talking Trees: Prompts
- Built Environment Brainstorming: Prompts
- The Bird’s Nest on The Windowsill: Prompts
- Our Many Trips Around The Sun: Inspired by Agate Fossil Beds
- Bug Orchestra: Prompts
- Mapping Our Moves: Prompts
- Telling Stories About Place