It’s been a fun year to teach Government to High School students, what with the elections here in the states. Before the elections we spent quite a bit of time on the election process and even visited the local headquarters for each the dominant parties talking to those that ran the local campaigns for the presidential candidates.

As part of understanding the marketing side of campaigns, we talked about mass media; newspapers, magazines, television, internet. Some will even argue cell phones are the new mass media as well. It’s all a vehicle for how we communicate on the large scale~how we convey a message.

Mass media is something we are all familiar with on some level, whether it’s listening to the radio, watching television or posting our poetry online.

As I was studying performance poetry, I bought a book called The Spoken Word Revolution. It is a book filled with performance poetry and it also comes with a CD of the poets performing their works. I also have the second volume of the series as well. I keep those CDs in my car to listen to often.

One poet, Todd Alcott, does a great piece from the perspective of a television. You can see a video of that poem here.

Today, I want to focus on that vehicle. You can write a poem from the perspective of one of the medias, much like the ‘Television’ poem, or focus on how mass media affects us, or what your thoughts are one it. You can choose to just include one of the medias in your poem, or choose a quote from one of them, a commercial, a movie, a book, a newspaper.

This one is fairly wide open, so have at it. Have some fun with it. Maybe you will try out a new media, make a video, record your poem, put your poem in a cartoon. I dunno, I just polish the glasses and keep the verse flowing. Smiles.

If you are new here, here is how it works.

• Write a poem and post it to your webpage, just make sure it addresses the topic in some way.
• Click the Mr Linky button below and enter your name and direct URL of your poem
• This is where you will also find the other participants, read, give feedback to the other poets. We are a community and in this together.
• Promote your own poem and the prompt on the social media of your choice, if you include @dversepoets it will be easier for us to find you.
• Have fun.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with. Have a great weekend & I will see you out on the trail.  ~Brian