Children’s Poetry

We learned early in our work that the expressive arts provide powerful healing tools for traumatized children. A child can paint on a canvas or write in a poem things they can’t yet say in a therapy office, and their work is often stunningly beautiful. Over the years, we have collected rooms full of paintings, volumes of poetry, several albums of songs, and produced numerous plays that bring all these expressions to life in drama. The Children’s Music Project brings songwriters to the table to help compose songs based on the children’s poetry and stories. Here are some volumes of children’s poetry. If you’re a songwriter, or just want to read them, we invite you to click on the image and see the poems from each book in PDF format. We know that song lyrics are different from lines in a poem, requiring different meter and phrasing. Many songs have been created from children’s poetry after rephrasing a poem, or by using only one line or phrase from the poem, carrying the poem’s theme with newly created lyrics, or combining lines or phrases from several poems. All these methods have led to beautiful songs based on the poetry. If, after reading through these works, you find you are interested in creating a song from a child’s poem, or would like to know more about the songwriting project, email Gary Priour, gary@youth-ranch.org. To see examples of songs we have created from our children’s poetry, check out our Children’s Music Project YouTube Channel.