Book Spine Poetry

I wanted to share something with you that I've been working on the past few days.  I just discovered a really fun, inspiring form of making poetry from book spine titles.  This is the coolest thing.  The best definition of "book spine poetry" that I can give you is that you look for book titles (not authors) either in your own book collection at home, or in a library.  You find a book title that speaks to you or sounds intriguing, then you find some other titles to go along with it to make a short poem in a way that makes sense.  Once you have your books together and your poem, you stack the books with their spines showing in the order of the poem.  You read the titles, not the authors, to make the poem.  Then snap a picture.  Anyone can make poetry with book spine titles.

Then I asked myself, what better place could I do this than in a library where I work?  Man, the possibilities are endless.  It was all I could do today to do my real work.  What I really wanted to do was go out in the stacks and look for poems.  I did manage to make a few and I made this short video.  I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you will be inspired to make your own book spine poetry. If you do, please take pictures and share. My understanding is that some schools are using this as a learning tool to get kids interested in writing poetry. I sure wish my teachers had used these types of things when I was in school. I think my writing and other schoolwork would have been alot more fun if they had.