I will be doing a long (10 sessions) poetry workshop in a few weeks. I’m looking for poetry recommendations, either a book or a single poem even. Here’s the catch – the audience is a group of 10 incarcerated boys (men?) aged 16-18.  I want to start each session with reading some different poems then I’ll get them writing.

While I have a lot of poetry books on my shelves I wonder if anyone has any favorites they think would work well with this age group and in this situation?

So far in my stack I have:

You Hear Me? By Betsy Franco

The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur

Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps by Bill Aguado

What Have You Lost? by Naomi Shihab Nye