BAY MINETTE, Ala. — National Poetry Month has students at Baldwin County High School. reading poems, reading about poets, researching, writing essays and even writing their own poems.

Janie Baker’s creative writing class took the timing as an opportunity to break away from fiction and burst into verse.

Courtney Odom, a junior at BCHS, said she was happy to dive back into poetry because she’s been writing it since seventh grade.

“I write mostly in free verse and about what’s going on at the time,” she said in a recent interview at the school.

Odom has written 50-60 poems in that time and claims Emily Dickinson as her favorite poet.

Blaine Johnston, a senior at BCHS, was writing a free-verse poem titled “Straight Ahead,” during a recent visit to the class. The prompt came from Baker, who asked students to write what they saw around them, he said, explaining his motivation.

“I write what I can see, and I care not to see what’s around me because I don’t like this place,” Johnston said. “I’m a teenager ,and I need to go pretend like I’m mature.”

He said he has written four poems so far, but he mostly writes short stories and philosophies, because “I like getting ideas out of my head.

“I like writing much more than I like reading,” Johnston said. “I like to be what other people read.”

Jordan Jandran, a junior at BCHS, also enjoys being the poet read by people close to him, he said.

“I’ve been writing since fifth or sixth grade, just writing for girlfriends or friends,” he said.

Jandran said that his poetry is written in free verse and on a variety of topics.

“I don’t like to stay on one main thing,” he said. “I like to write about different stuff.”

Baker said is glad her students find self expression in her classroom.

“Everybody has something to say, and they want others to know and understand it,” she said. “Students reveal themselves and others with their poetry. I’ll read someone’s poem aloud and just enjoy everyone’s reaction to it. They really peg each other and me in the poems.”

Fellow BCHS instructor Sheila McKibbon is offering poetry and poets as a topic option for her English class’ research paper. While some have chosen historical and other prose, several students chose a famous poet to focus on out of the Anglo-Saxon, Middle Ages, Elizabethan and Modern eras’ studies.

While students at BCHS use poetry to express themselves, prepare for college and learn about life, many other lessons, events and projects go on around the country during National Poetry Month, and Bay Minette is a small part of that whole.