More ESL Poets

I've discovered two more teachers who write poetry for ESL learners!

Venette Cook taught ESL and French Literature for many years at San Francisco State University.  She has a web page, "Beautiful English" and a YouTube channel, "Beautiful English: Free ESL Lessons with Poems".  At the website you can download her poems and/or order her books which are available in print from Amazon or from Blurb Books (blurb.com).  Venette is multi-talented.  She can play guitar and sing!  So you can hear some of her works set to music as well as spoken.

Mark Hancock wrote his first English language teaching book – Pronunciation Games – over 20 years ago.  With Annie McDonald, he has a website at "Hancock McDonald English Language Teaching".  There you can download or order their books, games and other materials.  Their recent PronPack series of books has its own YouTube site.  In addition, search YouTube for Mark's name and you will find many videos of him as a noted expert giving lectures at conventions.

Both of these teachers make their material available for free or at low cost.  

Looking at their books has made me realize that (1) I should add illustrations to my poems to make them more interesting and meaningful.  (2) I need to create at least audio tracks, if not videos, for the poems.  Unfortunately I cannot sing like Venette, nor do I have a talented graphic artist available like Mark. However Pete, my graphic artist colleague at my day job gave me the name of a website, Fiverr, where you will find very talented artists all around the world offering freelance services.  Some are in countries where they can make a living even though charging what, to us in the US, is an extremely low rate.

We'll see what develops.