QUESTION: Juxtaposing Poetry on top of Photographs

[steve lynch]

As part of our poetry unit, my students and I are having portraits taken by a professional photographer in the school. My idea was to have them write a poem of kinds on top of their portrait in order to create a visual and verbal piece for their portfolio.

Does anybody know of poetry projects like this or poets or photographers who've done this kind of project before that I can use as a genre study for my students? I think it would be good for them to get more ideas about what and how their project can look. Any help is glorious, all help is appreciated.

Thanks!

Steve

[Cassie]

You may want to check out the illuminated texts at awaytoteach.net or check out some of Dan Eldon's journals at daneldon.org

[Frank W. Baker]

I have used both Flickr NOTES and BubbleSnaps to embed questions (or text) within a photograph or image. Both are very easy to use.

[Helen Lazzaro]

Our middle school students create poetry books, and use microsoft publisher to put the image/picture behind the poem. These are original student written poems, enhanced by pictures. Here is an example - in pdf form. This would work for a photo as well, with the poem positioned in nice font in front of the picture. Most of our students do not have handwriting that would give their original poems justice.

If the photographer only gives you a photograph, and not a graphic file, you can scan in the photo to be able to place a poem on top.

If you do not want to use technology, then you can use scrapbooking to add the poem to the picture. In addition, if you go to images and type in photo poem, you will see lots of examples of what others have done.

Hope this helps.

[Svea]

Check out the artist Judy Gelles. She has done poetry over photographs.

[patsy everett]

I found Love: Selected Poems by e.e. cummings in a bargain bin at one of the big bookstores. Here on amazon.com. It has beautiful art (including poetry on faces!).

[Ryan Goble]

You might also check out the text based art of Jenny Holtzer - here is a google image search result and this book is great.

[Ryan Goble]

Off Nicole's link poets.org has this Jenny Holzer lesson/link
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5938

[Nicole]

Consider looking at these 2 sites. The first is a collection of poet's discussions of their work about art; the second is a poet/ artist that share his art as well as his accompanying poetry.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/202

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~c.english/poempaint02.html