Poetry videos have multidisciplinary and cross-genre potential: they can be included in lesson plans related to social studies, poetry, creative writing, local history, local geography, urban studies, digital media, or film.
Here below are lists of 14-16 selected site-based poetry videos made for the Poet Laureate’s City Poems Project, (along with links to the text of the poems) which are suitable for elementary school students and higher grades that was requested by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. Two of the edgier poetry videos which might especially appeal to high school and post-secondary students involve interpretations of Postcard Home from English Bay (based on a poem by Alex Leslie) which are on the second list below. All the videos can be found on the VPL YouTube Playlists that are linked in the introductory paragraph. The videos are all captioned or include text.
To get a taste of some of the videos, here is a short trailer of some of the City Poems Project poetry videos currently screening on weekdays on a rotational basis (alongside short films by other filmmakers) at the public outdoor Mount Pleasant Community Arts Screen at Kingsway and Main Street in East Vancouver.
There were a total of 42 poetry videos made by post-secondary student teams: 33 poetry videos from 4 classes in 2023 and 9 poetry videos from one class in the spring term in 2024. Hope teachers find this resource helpful!
The secondary school resource includes two additional videos: