ANN ARBOR—A high school student at Lansing’s Waverly High School uses a modem to connect to the University of Michigan, then begins downloading poems written by students in Germany and Japan. Another student reviews a printed critique of her poem from the U-M mentor, a student majoring in English and education.

Meanwhile Waverly students continue to revise their latest poems, which they will later upload to U-M. Still others are brainstorming book titles and themes for the poetry journal they will assemble at the end of the semester.

What sounds like a busy day at a publishing house is just another day in the life of high school students participating in U-M’s International Poetry Guild (IPG).

Students from around the world are meeting in IPG’s electronic classroom to share a common interest—poetry. Developed at the U-M School of Education, IPG unites students in an on-line conversation devoted entirely to their own writing.

Participants recently met their computer cohorts and their student mentors from U-M at the IPG Young Poets’ Conference in Ann Arbor. More than 60 students from three Michigan high schools—Avondale in Auburn Hills, Howell, and Waverly—took part in the day-long program of workshops and readings.

Two of the U-M seniors, Mary Biddinger of Rochester, Mich., and Bich Nguyen of Ada, Mich., taught a workshop called ” Off the Wall Writing Exercises.” Biddinger and Nguyen gave the students ” 20 Little Poetry Projects,” a kind of recipe for writing poems, because ” we wanted them to use different language and different topics,” Biddinger said. The mentors encouraged the students to avoid cliches and strive for ” fresher language, to write about concrete things, instead of ideas,” she added.

The two mentors also held individual workshops. ” So many of the poems we get in IPG are about love,” Nguyen said, explaining the motivation behind her second workshop, ” Focus on Love Poems.” Here students read a selection of contemporary love poems, then Nguyen took them for a walk through U-M’s Law Quadrangle. ” I wanted them to take inspiration from the architecture and from nature, and write a love poem,” she said.

Nguyen emphasized the wide range of approaches poets take in dealing with this tricky topic. ” We discussed different ideas of what love poems are about,” she said. ” They can be mean, linking love with hate. Sometimes they don’t even have to use the word ‘love.'” The workshop closed with the students reading their poems aloud, ” to build confidence,” Nguyen said.

The high school poets also read from their work at the Ann Arbor Barnes and Noble bookstore, and taped their work for ” Living Poets,” a radio show produced by WCBN, U-M’s student-run radio station. The visiting poets also sat in on several U-M English classes.

The IPG Young Poets’ Conference reinforced the poetry guild’s role in providing a place for high school students who otherwise might not have a peer community of poets, said IPG Director Jeffrey Stanzler.

” There are people in IPG, peers in other schools and the U- M mentors, who take their writing seriously and honor the effort that goes into the work,” Stanzler said.

” IPG offers a safe environment for people who don’t ordinarily have a place to get together. Unlike activities such as theater or sports, poetry is often solitary. IPG provides a rallying point for poets.”

EDITORS: For further information, contact:

Jeffrey Stanzler, director of the International Poetry Guild, at (313) 763-5950 or on e-mail ([email protected]).

Linda Johnson, faculty adviser at Howell High School, at (517) 548-6200.

Janice Kesel, faculty adviser at Waverly High School, at (517) 321-3831.

Berit Pavloff, faculty adviser at Avondale High School, at (810) 852-2850.

WCBN[email protected]