Gallery • 25 Photos

Mikayla Rose

Dim lights, quiet piano music, and the poet reading their polished work. After a month of studying and creating poetry, Ms. Janove’s Creative Writing students shared their best pieces at their poetry café on October 6, 2025. They covered various topics, including hobbies, seasons, stress, and childhood memories. Brimming with figurative language and sound devices, these writers poured their emotions into their poetry. This year, the Creative Writing course was slightly different, since DRRHS paired with Bridgewater State University to offer Creative Writing as an Early College class, offering students greater opportunities to grow as writers. The class spent a little over a month learning about poetry before writing a meaningful poem for their assessment, The Poetry Café. However, the Poetry Café has been a long-established tradition that started with another member of the English Department, Ms. Siachos.

Her inspiration for the Poetry Café was to combine the skills of composition and presentation, but most importantly, to offer a space for students to take pride in their work. Ms. Siachos commented, “Knowing that poetry can be slightly intimidating, I thought I would create something that wouldn’t be so daunting for students and that would culminate in a celebration of our original poetry.” And the atmosphere of this year’s poetry café was exactly that: an atmosphere of celebration. The students seemed comfortable as they read their work, and each poem received warm feedback from the poet’s classmates. Their comfort was in part due to the workshops held in the days prior to the presentations. The workshops were a newer experience that came from the collaboration between Ms. Siachos and Ms. Janove. Ms. Siachos explained that, “As teachers, we always reflect on what works well and what we can do better… and collaborating with Ms. Janove definitely made the Poetry Café more special.”  The workshop day allowed students to break off into small groups and offer both compliments and constructive criticism for others’ poems. With this, they were able to adjust their poems as they saw fit. As a result, they were then able to walk into the café with confidence in their writing abilities.

The Poetry Café as a whole was largely student-led and student-centered. While the structure was established beforehand, students composed, peer-edited, and revised the work on their own, utilizing the skills they learned in class. As Ms. Siachos stated, “[the] students own it.” Each poet’s work was unique, which made the event so enjoyable. When asked what her favorite part of the Poetry Café was, one creative writing student responded, “It was cool to see everyone’s different writing styles and the different poems they wrote.” Through the poets’ diverse topics and styles, listeners were able to get a sense of who they are, as both writers and people. Not all the poems were personal, but they nevertheless provided some insight into the poets’ thoughts and emotions. Altogether, the Poetry Café was an exciting highlight of the Creative Writing curriculum and a tradition that is expected to continue throughout the years.