Catalog poems list or define something, someone, someplace, or an emotion. The poem describes and makes a great writing activity for refining adjective use.
To begin, choose the topic of the poem. Will the poem be about yourself (My Summer Vacations) or a friend (What I Like About Sally)? Will it list your likes (What I Like) or dislikes (The Things That I Loathe)? It could also list a person’s favorite sports activities (Active Joe).
The catalog poem can be about a place. A poem can be written about the street a student live on that catalogs all that she sees when walking it. The students can also catalog a park, city, state, province, or even a country by listing favorite things about where they live or a list of why they would like to live somewhere else.
Students can also write a catalog poem that lists why a camping trip was a disaster or one that lists all the wonderful things they did (or the relatives they met) when at a family picnic.
For objects, write about a grandmother’s sewing drawer and what’s in it. A stamp collection or a coin collection can also be used.
For example, if a student were to write a catalog poem about what was in a knitting bag, she might title the poem: The Knitting Bag.
Next, she would begin listing items in the bag:
“There are softish balls of blue and orange
Tangled strings fighting to be free
A scattered button lying on the bottom
And a lonely google eye staring up at me”
Rhyming is optional, although it is usually easiest to pay attention to the rhythm of the catalog poem more so than it is to try to get everything to rhyme.
When writing a catalog poem about a feeling, students can choose to write about such things as What Makes Me Sad or Things That Make Me Happy.
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