On Monday, Sept. 9, new and returning members of CHS’s poetry club filed into Emma Hamstra’s room for the first meeting of the year. The atmosphere was quiet but comfortable, with the club members sitting in small groups and sharing home-baked brownies. Ellen Stone, long-time leader and driving force behind poetry club, expressed her enthusiasm for what promised to be a year of growth and discovery for the club.
“Last year, we had something like nine seniors… they were fantastic,” Stone said. “I’m really excited to see all of these new faces this year.”
The meeting began with a planning session for the club fair coming up this Friday. Members wanted to strategize about what to display to represent the club in the best way possible. Then, Stone announced a visit from Michigan’s poet laureate, Nandi Comer, to Rackham Hall on Sept. 24. One thing that draws people to poetry club is the chance to keep up with news of the bustling Ann Arbor poetry event scene.
Stone then gathered volunteers to read their poems at an event held by Public School Poetry, an organization that Stone co-founded in 2023. Stone’s effort to spread her love of poetry extends much farther back than that, though. Since founding poetry club almost 15 years ago, she’s overseen multiple generations of high school poets and continues to find joy in helping them grow. To Stone, the most important aspect of poetry is that it allows for a level of self expression and examination that is hard to get in a typical school environment.
“The reason that we started [poetry club] is because it was pretty clear that there wasn’t really a place in school where students could do their own writing,” Stone said. “So if you just wanted to write because you like writing, and you like poetry, and you want to learn more about it and do it more for yourself, it seemed like there could be a place for that.”
Walker Ledbetter is a sophomore at CHS and a regular attendee of poetry club. The club has allowed him to do just that: its very open atmosphere coupled with the experience of the mentors helps him develop his interest in writing on his own terms.
“[Poetry] is like a different kind of art form. There’s writing like nonfiction writing, and then there’s painting, but poetry is kind of this different, other sort of art form. That’s really quite beautiful,” Ledbetter said. Poetry club’s inviting approach has uncovered a taste for poetry Ledbetter didn’t even know he had: “I never was really into reading at first, and I definitely wasn’t an avid poet, I would just do what was in the club… now I sort of want to think about maybe if I wanted to actually get better at poetry… like, maybe start reading some poetry by myself.”
The club moved on to the main event of every meeting: a paper handout followed by a prompt for members to write their own poem. This one included the poem “Waiting for Happiness” by Nomi Stone, and a prompt for the club members to write their own poem inspired by Stone’s. After a couple minutes of writing time, several people opted to share their poems. Some people had followed the prompt, but others took the time to share a different poem instead. Claire Lewis was one of the few to make their own prompt. Lewis is a senior at CHS and second-year member of Poetry Club. She was nervous to go to poetry club when she was an underclassman, but now loves it due to the chill environment and connections she was able to make there. Her hope for the club this year is that more people will attend, especially those who are on the fence about it.
“I think that people don’t realize what poetry can be,” Lewis said. “A lot of people just have this one expectation for what it is, and it can be anything you want it to be. That’s why I love it.”
