It is a quiet evening in the boarding house (apart from being a school librarian, these days I also take some duties as a house master in the boys boarding house) I was reading the New York Times online edition and came across this extremely interesting article:
What Rhymes with ‘Undead’? Some Poets Know
It made for interesting reading.
I have worked with a number of teens that would respond well to the idea of creating zombie poetry. It is quirky enough to attract even some of the hardest to reach kids and with zombies becoming more mainstream it would not put off too many of the more normal young people.
Creating a Zombie-themed writing event could be run over two or even more meetings. It is a little-known fact that Night of the Living Dead – the movie that started the zombie movement is now in the public domain and can be shown freely in libraries without the need for permissions. The film itself is below:
The film can be used to discuss how zombies in cinema & on television have changed over the decades, from the slow shambling monstrosities of Night of the Living Dead to the faster shambling monstrosities of 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead. You can bill it as a mixed media Zombie poetry writing session, including movies, books, comics including The Walking Dead, Marvel Zombies and more. There are even musicians that have written songs about zombies but they may not be appropriate for the audience, for an example take a listen to Voltaire singing Zombie Prostitute.
There are examples of zombie poems online in case you need to provide inspiration, including the Little Boof of Zombie Poems by Tom Beckett.
