Contemporary Teaching and Learning Poetry

The purpose of the HETL Anthology Series is to use the medium and craft of poetry and creative prose to explore teaching and learning as a human experience. This series will provide educators with an artistic and literary medium for expressing their individual and shared experiences as educators. It will provide many windows and doors into the varied perspectives, thoughts, and feelings of educators from around the world. It seeks to showcase the creative use of language and writing and how language and writing can be used as vehicles for creative self-expression, professional development, and personal empowerment.

Viewing teaching and learning from the lens of poetry and creative prose provides a novel way to engage teachers and students more deeply in the teaching-learning process. A such, the focus of this series will be to use creative writing as an artistic means to express and describe those aspects of teaching and learning that are most meaningful and life transforming. This series will include several volumes that will showcase all types of poetry (e.g., free verse, blank verse, rhyme) and creative prose (e.g., lyric essays, prose poems, short short creative nonfiction). The volumes in this series can also serve as textbooks for college courses in poetry and creative writing as well as supplemental readings for courses in instructional leadership, teacher preparation, and the like.

What is poetry and why is it, and this anthology series, important? Poetry is a literary art form that uses the aesthetic qualities of language to express the full depth and breadth of human experience in personally meaningful ways. Poetry is a type of subjective interpretive process (verstehen) to be better understand and convey the full depth and breadth of the human experience. Poetry is a multidimensional form of language and artistic expression concerned with the full range of human experiences. Poetry uses the pen (or keyboard) as its brush, ink (or pixels) as its paint, and paper (or screen) as its canvas. The writer thus makes creative use of language (the play of words and their multiple meanings) to paint a unique and rich depiction of life and to express the manifold aspects of human experience in unique and meaningful ways.

For example, poetry (and creative prose) uses such literary devices as metaphor, simile, allusion, analogy, personification, sound, form, repetition, rhythm, irony, symbolism, paradox, and imagery to express the deeper meaning of human experiences. Poetry draws on these devices, and much more, to help convey the full depth and breadth of human experiences. Poetry not only deepens our understanding of what it means to be human but it also aims to more deeply engage our intellect, emotions, and imagination all at the same time. Poetry can help educators and students and others move towards a deeper awareness of and appreciation for experiential knowledge, which in turn, can foster more effective and meaningful teaching and learning experiences.

We also welcome literary forms and subgenres of creative prose that are closely aligned with poetry (e,g, lyric essays - poetic essays, prose poems, short short creative nonfiction). These forms allow the writer to intersect and merge elements and techniques of the more commonplace genres of standard prose and poetry. We also welcome experimental forms of creative writing that seek to express and interpret the manifold meanings of the human experience by creatively mixing, synthesizing, re-purposing, integrating, and dancing with the various elements and techniques of different genres in innovative and meaningful ways.

Review board:

Ron Barnett, UK, is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is an authority on the theoretical understanding of the university and higher education and he is the editor and author of many books. He is a Fellow both of the Higher Education Academy and the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Barbara Cozza, USA, is Associate Professor, Assistant Chairperson and Program Director for the Ed.D. in Instructional Leadership program in the Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership at St. John’s University. She is a senior editor for The Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education and a Board member for the HETL Association.

David Giles, Australia, is Professor and Dean of the School of Education at Flinders University and he is on the Editorial Board of the Institute for Meaning-Centered Education. He is the editor and author of many articles and books.

David S. Goldstein, USA, is Professor of American and ethnic studies in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program, and Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Washington, Bothell. He publishes on ethnic American literature and on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Gunhild Jensen, USA, is Professor of modern world languages at the Language Learning Academy and lecturer in German at St. Peter’s University. She is an international language instructor and expert in English, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, French, and Italian linguistics, literature, and history.

Jud Newborn, USA, is a New York City (NYC) based author, dramatic multimedia lecturer, film curator, & expert on anti-Semitism, extremism & the fight for human rights worldwide. He is the Founding Historian of NYC’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. Today he serves as Special Projects Curator for the renowned Cinema Arts Centre.

Natalia Moskvina, Russia, is Professor at the Far East University of Humanities in Khabarovsk, Russia. She is Head of Innovative Development and Maintenance Grants Department and she is Head of the European Union international project “The Social Psychologists” aimed at providing psychological support to migrants in the Far East Russia.

Linda Nilson, USA, is founding director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation (OTEI) at Clemson University. She has also published many articles and book chapters and has presented keynote speeches and workshops at conferences, colleges, and universities both nationally and internationally.

Sofi Starnes, USA, has received many poetry awards, including the Aldrich Poetry Prize, the Transcontinental Poetry Editor’s Prize, the Whitebird Poetry Series Prize, the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, and the Virginia Writers Club Superior Achievement Award in Poetry. In 2012, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor McDonnell.

Lesley Saunders, UK, is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, London, a Research Fellow at the Oxford University Department of Education, and an Honorary Fellow of the College of Teachers. She is an award-winning author of several books of poetry and has written journal articles on the relationship between poetry and research in education.

Peter Charles Taylor, Australia, is Director of the Transformative Education Research Group (TERG) at Curtin University. TERG specializes in innovative research methods for professional development of creative and critical educators, such as indigenous knowledge systems, contextualized curricula, and integral research methods.

Linda Watts, USA, is a Professor at University of Washington, Bothell. She has contributed to many edited collections such as, Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture; Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century.