Down the Rabbit Hole, a History of Poetry Alive!®

Founded in 1984, Poetry Alive!  conducted its first show in a music hall called McDibb's  in Black Mountain, North Carolina.  The audience was made up of about 100 listeners, friends mostly.  One audience member was a teacher who saw the educational potential of the show and subsequently asked Poetry Alive! to visit her classes.  That was our simple start.

In the 20+ years since then, Poetry Alive! has added four other two-person teams to meet the demand for  shows.  Our presentations have taken us to a total audience of over 7,000,000 in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, South Korea, China, the Bahamas, Venezuela and Peru.  Each year Poetry Alive! now conducts approximately 2,200 performances, over 700 classroom followups, and 100 teacher workshops for  an estimated 600,000 students nationwide.  We also conduct several specialized onsite In-Services from 1 to 5 days in length each year.

In 1990 we began an annual summer residency program.  The week-long Poetry Alive! Summer Residency allowed us to share all that we know about teaching poetry and performance in the classroom.  The residencies are approved for Masters level credits and CEUs. In 2000 we began conducting three residencies to meet increasing demand. 

Now, beginning in  2006, we are expanding and enlarging the value of the residency program by moving it into school districts.  The program will morph into The Poetry Alive Institute for Educators, and it will be even more valuable and practical, and more importantly, it will be far more accessible.  Now a district can bring the Poetry Alive Institute to the educators.  That will eliminate the problems that come with teachers traveling away from home for extended periods.

Poetry Alive is very much available on the web.  At www.Poetry Alive!®.com you can find all about Poetry Alive! programs, including our poetry products: educational books, our  poetry audio CDs and poetry products  for all audiences.  And of course we have included information about our Assembly Shows and Workshops which are the cornerstone of Poetry Alive!'s success.

For more detailed information about who makes up Poetry Alive, see our Vita.  If you'd like to join the Poetry Alive! team, see our Employment page.

Returning to the bardic tradition of long ago, the Poetry Alive! actors have  memorized hundreds of poems—from the classics to the popular to the contemporary. The company sends out actors in pairs to schools, libraries, festivals and anywhere there is an audience for “poetry with a twist.”

Conference Keynote and Workshops

Poetry Alive! has been active in providing keynote addresses, special performances, and instructional workshops for national, regional, state, and local organizations (and affiliates) such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the International Reading Association (IRA), Teachers Applying Whole Language (TAWL), the American Library Association (ALA), the National Middle School Association (NMSA), and The Core Knowledge Foundation as well as numerous literacy conferences, arts-in-education conferences, cultural diversity workshops, library events, and arts festivals.

Get on the Assembly Show schedule and see how much fun you can have teaching and learning poetry.