MIDDLEBURY — Ted Scheu, Middlebury-based children’s poet and teacher, is hosting the first ever “Warming Words” poetry celebration “jam” on Sunday, Jan. 10, from 2-4 p.m. at the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Middlebury.
The readings, by children ages 6 to 11 from schools and home schools all over Addison County, will celebrate the young writers and their poetry. The jam aims to brighten our sometimes-bleak midwinter — all in support of the United Way of Addison County. Attendance will be free, but contributions will be warmly welcomed.
Scheu has been promoting the event in elementary schools in Addison County all fall. He is soliciting poems on topics that are important to the poet. Sixty poems will be chosen to be read by the student poet at the event. Scheu says he hopes to make the jam an annual event.
Applications and more information may be found at Scheu’s website (www.poetryguy.com), at the schools, or by email at [email protected]. All the poems that are submitted will be posted on Scheu’s website, and all those who are invited to share their poem on Jan. 10 will get a free, signed copy of one of Scheu’s poetry collections at the event.
Scheu’s books will be sold and signed at the event as well — all to benefit the United Way.
Scheu is a former Vermont elementary teacher who travels around the state and country teaching poetry workshops — helping kids find their own voices with poetry, and sharing his energy for the power of poetry to make people better writers, a power he wished he’d had as a child.
Scheu’s poems, written mostly in rhyming, rhythmic verse, touch the heart of important issues in the lives of children. He will share some of his own work at the event. His poems are published in over two dozen anthologies in the U.S. and U.K., including most recently The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry (2015), and in six of his own collections: “I Froze My Mother,” “I Tickled My Teachers,” “I Threw My Brother Out,” “Now I Know My ZBCs,” “Getting the Best of Me,” and most recently, “Someday I’ll Be a Teacher,” all from Young Poets’ Press.
The event is open to the public. The CVUUS is on 2 Duane Court, off Charles Avenue, just north of Middlebury Union High School.