Invective Poem

Today’s post is inspired by American poet extraordinaire Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Aimee’s collection Oceanic frequently appears on my AP Literature class syllabus, and she has a new book, Night Owl, that I am so excited to pull from for class discussion and writing prompts, starting with her invective poem “For Elephant Poachers: An Invective.”

An invective poem is a poem of anger, usually full of curses and/or insults. Reading Aimee’s poem reminded me of another one of my favorite poems, “God Wills It” by Chilean poet and diplomat Gabriela Mistral.

Let’s face it – students love to rage out. This lesson lets them dig into their angst and let it loose!

Use these slides to guide your students in:

• a pre-writing notebook activity
• learning about two queens of poetry: Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Gabriela Mistral
• reading two mentor text invective poems (mentioned above)
• open-ended analysis questions for discussing the poems
• prompt to write their own original invective poem
• rubric

I can’t recommend Aimee’s Night Owl enough. She has so many gems in here and she writes in cool forms like abecedarian, ars poetica, carmina figurata, epistle, found poem, haibun, ode, tondo, and zuihitsu. Don’t worry – she explains them all in her Author’s Note section! If you are already familiar with Aimee’s work, this book will make you fall in love with her even more. And, if you aren’t familiar with her yet, what are you waiting for?!

You can also check out this hyperdoc for more on teaching Aimee’s poetry. And lots more hyperdocs here!

Sources:

Mistral, Gabriela. “God Wills It.” Poetry, December 1941.

Nezhukumatathil, Aimee. “For Elephant Poachers: An Invective.” Night Owl, Ecco, 2026.

• 
  I was Wrong Poem
• 
  Invective Poem
• 
  Word Scramble Poem
• 
  “Do Us Good” by Amanda Gorman, a poem inspired by Wicked