As we prepare to begin our January Open Write—a time for teachers to come together over five days to nurture our writing lives, witness one another’s words, and gather ideas to support student writers—we want to take a moment to hold our California teachers and friends in our thoughts. The devastating fires weigh heavily on our hearts, and we hope this space offers some solace and connection during such a challenging time. You can learn more about Open Write here.
Our Host: Shaun Ingalls
Shaun lives in Las Vegas where he teaches high school English. When he is not buried in journal articles as part of his Ph.D. studies in Instructional Design and Technology, he is exploring the world with his beautiful wife, Aigul, his brilliant daughter, Aliza, his fearless son, Leo, and their neurotic Bichapoo, Lucky.
Inspiration
The constant evolution of language fascinates me. It’s always changing. Evolving. No duh! For those who can’t hang, it’s time to take a chill pill and adapt to the gnarly new lingo. Don’t have a cow, dude!
Today’s inspiration comes from the brilliant work of Richard Franks’ Shakespeare for gen Z series. Franks Gen Z Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet Edition. Although this isn’t poetry, the same process can be used to compose original poetry.
I love using modern, colloquial speech to retell the classic, dusty texts that we use in the classroom. If you want to know if students truly understand what they are reading, have them retell it in their own language – slang and all.
Process
Use the newest, freshest vocabulary to flex your poetic muscles. If you need a dictionary, check out Wikipedia’s Glossary of Generation Z Slang.
There are many different ways to write today:
- Select a text (story, poem, essay, etc.) to retell using Gen Z parlance.
- Choose a character from an older text and write the poem from their perspective using modern speech.
- Just write a poem about anything using any interesting language from any time period.
Since my students are about to read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” my poem is Glaucon’s version of events if he were a teenager in 2025.
Shaun’s Poem
“Plato’s Ohio Cave”
Listen up, Fam.
I just had a convo with my boy, Socrates.
He told me about some dudes in a prison cave, no cap!
You won’t believe what went on in that trash cave! Totally sus.
Here’s the tea.
There was this group of beta’s chained up in the cave.
Behind them burned a fire, but they couldn’t turn their heads to see it.
All they could see were shadows on the dingy walls.
People would walk and talk behind them, carrying merch and such, but they couldn’t make out the details.
They couldn’t even see the sun!
One lucky rizzler with max aura was set free and led out of the cave.
The sun was hella bright at first, but he got used to it.
Everything he thought he knew about the world was low-key different.
Talk about gaslighting!
When he went back to tell the squad what’s up, they ghosted him.
His vision was dope during cave-times, but now he couldn’t see jack.
The vibes in the cave were giving “outsider” energy,
So bro went back to the surface where things were dope and less cringy.
To be honest, I think Socrates needs a vibe check.
He is literally the CEO of cringe.
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.
Shaun,
Thanks for this prompt that pushed me to play with language. I’ve recently read Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls. Loved it and still thinking about, wondering about, what it all means. So it was sun to translate some of it into slang.
Murakami’s man
felt good about his pookie
they met at an essay competition
she slayed
Queen
Periodt
and she was looksmaxxing
they were constantly texting
and taking long walks
but then she ghosted him
he stanned her for one of Lincoln’s scores
occasionally he dated other women
but they were too basic
or he was
he travelled to a sus city
strange af
giving unicorn and gatekeeper vibes
to find her
he left his shadow outside the city’s uncertain walls
he became a dream reader
in the library where she worked
she prepared him herbal tea
let him walk her home
but nothing more
the situationship had him tweaking
finally a jit with limited fit
became the GOAT dream reader
went Mike Tyson on him
and sent him packing
back to the real world
he was shook
was he himself
or his shadow?
Whoa, Shaun – what a door you’ve flung open here! The idea of rewriting poems and stories in Gen Z is fascinating. A quick zip around the Internet informs me that even the Bible is being rewritten thus (called “holy tea” – ok, now I have to use that).
Your poem flows so well that it seems effortless – that is, of course, the usual result of a LOT of effort and skill.
I almost didn’t take up this challenge because my own initial efforts seemed too awful to share (!!). The curse of the X-er trying to sound Z. Well… that led me to a word: Cheugy. Ok, I can play with that. I almost feel I should include translation and annotation (Chaucer, anyone?), so that the intended meaning of my poem’s language is clear. But I also know you have to trust your readers. Here goes. Big yikes:
A Unfortunately Cheugy
But Straight Fire Poem
4 My Granddaughters
Franna finna
tell you no cap:
being your grandma
is lit lit lit
my girl one
my girl two
both of you
G-O-A-T
4eva to me
y’all my glow-up
as you grow up
just know up
your whole life long
you’re my song
my girl one
my girl two
4eva, for you
Franna finna
defend ya
befriend ya
someday ascend ya
(literally,
not just Gen Z)
where from the heavens
I’ll send ya
some Franna fire
4 your holy tea.
Word.
Right from the start: Franna finna (WOW) to the end, sending some Franna fire 4 holy tea from Heaven and the multiple meaning of Word here – it’s just a masterpiece. Two lucky little girls to have a Franna who will move Heaven and Earth to keep the channels open long into the future!
Fran,
I like the rhythm and rhyme of this stanza, as well as the meaning—fierce love:
Love the ending — slang from my generation: Word.
Shaun, I never thought I would read the Allegory of the Cave and have a new appreciation for it, but you certainly gave me that today as I read your writing.
Your prompt today also reminded me of my recent fixation on the word of the year — which many dictionaries put out, but the one I was particularly fascinated by was the American Dialect Society as they most recently voted on their selection for 2024. I decided to turn their press release into a kind of found poem (with additional lines pulled from other places on their website).
On the American Dialect Society Word of the Year 2024
by Erica Johnson
The word of the year
not necessarily new,
but newly prominent
notable —
in 1992 it was “Not!”
“Nom” was nowhere close in 2010.
But I may crash out,
because the ADS locked in
and with 145 votes selected
Rawdog for 2024.
Defined as to undertake
without usual protection,
preparation,
or comfort.
People rawdogged flights,
family dinners,
and final exams.
A piece of slang
crossing over
from sexual
to (almost) chaste
as we collectively
rawdog
the future.
Erica, one of things I love exploring with words/language is multifaceted meanings, depending on usage. What an interesting found poem here, marking the times with words of the year and their changing meanings. Case in point: even though rawdog had an original connotation that many might find “cringe,” you show us how it has gained broader meaning as “lack of preparation” or doing things the hard way. I looked it up and see that it can go even deeper, to mean reclaiming one’s mental space and connecting with one’s inner self, or as a means of showing how one can tolerate discomfort or solitude. Just wow. Who knew? The depth of words just goes on and on, even if the surface seems…Z-ish. Thanks for this inspiration!
Erica, that’s about as true an ending to a poem that has ever been written. Undertaking the future, without protection or comfort or preparation – – your thinking here and the feeling are mutual. I’m even thinking of the weather event coming this week and feel a little rawdogged right now.
Your prompt couldn’t be more timely. I am choosing to write an anecdote this morning: I assign a new vocabulary each week and this week the word was “hackneyed”. I asked them to respond with a hackneyed phrase and a fifth grader wrote “W rizz”. I tried to say it out loud and the whole class erupted in laughter. Not one of my best teaching moments. I told them I was getting too old to teach, and one sweet student said, “But you’re such a good teacher.” My heart was saved.
Margaret, hilarious! I had a moment like that where I was in the dark and my age blinders were showing. I’m with you, and I love that your sweet student came to the rescue.
Shaun! This is so awesome! You do such a great job of putting in slang yet making the piece still understandable! Indeed, this would be a fun student assignment. I went down many a rabbit hole this morning! I first wrote a poem raging against all this slang, then I did some research. I wanted to work Gen Z language into something academic-y but that didn’t work. So . . . here you go:
Periodt
Want the tea?
He’s part of my squad
we tight
I’ve started noticing
that he’s serving
and my sis
is shipping us
but I’m a noob
at this stuff
He’s got drip
and so much rizz
I’d like to go from BFF
to bae
I even like his beige flag.
I can’t be big yikes
and def don’t want
to come across as cheugy
but I want more
no cap.
Imma ask him
to Netflix and chill.
He responds
WTTP.
I don’t want to be a Karen
or pop off
but bruh
I want to ghost him.
Then,
after a bit
he sends
LMIRL.
Now, maybe we’re
getting somewhere.
I can’t be a simp,
but I wanna be his GF.
Somehow, he has
the wrong idea . . .
He wants to crash!
He texts CU46.
I am salty!
No cap!
ONG
I yeet my phone.
He can think I’m basic
but Imma curve
Now, I’m hangry
and maybe I’ll get crunk.
How sus!
People wanna ship us
and he wants 53X?
I would have to be tots sloshed
to smash.
I don’t wanna add to
his body count.
Here’s your key:
https://www.parents.com/teen-slang-dictionary-for-parents-8547711
~Susan Ahlbrand
18 January 2025
Susan, I am hung on
Imma ask him
to Netflix and chill.
{{stomachache laughing so hard}}
I like that you added a key – I think I feel a lot like a student reading a book in another language trying to figure out how Imma pass the test. This has been a reckoning of age for me.
I too held the word periodt in that dictionary for a while – – I looked at it and thought, “oh, they misspelled peridot.” It fascinated me, this word. That’s the Karen in me creeping out from the dusty passages of the past, knowing nothing about these newfangled words and sayings and thinking I can see mistakes others missed when I’m the one missing it! Cheers to your amazing poem and to the years that stand between me and the meaning without an urban dictionary.
Susan – amazing!! You speak such fluent Z! I could understand it even if I didn’t know exactly what some words mean. As I said to Shaun: Your poem seem effortless but I know – from experience and from your intro – that it really indicates a great deal of effort. Yet. Look how quickly you turned it out. I’m awed!
Susan – amazing! You speak such fluent Z! I could understand it all even if I didn’t know exactly what some terms mean. As I said to Shaun: Your poem seems effortless. I know, from experience and from your intro, that this is usually the result of a lot of effort. Yer look how quickly you turned it out. I’m awed!
Sorry for duplicate comment. Connectivity issue.
If I am honest, a phrase thrown over
the headrest in the bus ride,
barely legible utterances of my youth,
feels like what searching to be seen means,
or another form of silence. And then,
somehow in some impossible and unimagined life,
no matter how hard words came to my lips,
they found me in utterances
by the thousands, the scattering of syllables
at lockers and lunch tables. Each year
new phrases timebound yet tethered
somehow to my own. Am I wrong to say
I did not want to claim their words?
But I did. I did ask what does that mean
and who can use this phrase and if I did
would I sound like a try-hard? Intentionally
disrupting the insider bound bubble. Even now,
when assigned to new timebound creators
to their own words and song and people
who they will carry into their present and possible lives,
I feel my lips resisting, my fingers not wanting
to tap their words. At any moment, I could though,
make them ours. It’s not gone, that phrase thrower
on the bus, like totally gag me. Our world is always
already changing now, and they will find
new words to make sense of it. One day, such
words will tell the story of it all. It’s coming.
I’m purely smitten with the language of your poem, and I caught myself rereading for the lilts of language – lockers and lunch tables, present and possible, impossible and unimagined, timebound and tethered. Such cerebral energy in the structures you chose. It begs the question of words and meanings and how the evolution of these things is changing at the speed of thought in all the modalities of expression. This one needs to be sung from the rooftops and heard in the hearts of those of us who have a constant wonder-brow, trying to make sense of things.
What an absolutely fantastic homage to the changing of language from generation to generation. It’s hard to resist borrowing phrases from Gen Z when some of them are just so good — but I can relate to your feelings of hesitation as expressed in this poem.
Shaun, your poem and prompt has me already awake and alive this morning, my mind spinning with all the possibilities for classroom engagement. Thank you for bringing the spark of authentic language today. Your poem is rich with all the Gen Z language, and I’m laughing at the vibe check for Socrates. One thing I could do all day is watch Greg Edwards give his Thug Notes – – I crack up every single time and love this approach to getting on the level of students to explain classics. I have to say: I got an education in that dictionary.
When Sam Fricker Dives
the GOAT looksmaxxes
then plunges without a splash!
who is this diva???
Hi, Kim! I, too, thought about Thug Notes right away. I show them to my teacher candidates at least once to let them know what’s available “out there ” You made me laugh at GOAT. I remembered a student from two years ago, who took several classes with me. When I reminded to fill out the evaluation, he said: “Oh, I just say She is a GOAT in the comments.” I didn’t know what he meant and asked: Should I be upset? 😀
Kim,
I don’t understand. Ha. This is a lesson in language for sure as I am searching for context clues. I had to reread the title because my brain when to “dies,” and I didn’t know Sam Fricker but then realized he is a diver and this is an ode! And it all made perfect sense and was beautiful with the xx’s and the question marks and all caps. Love this and now Sam.
Peace,
Sarah
Kim, what a tribute to Fricker: The haiku queen pens a Z-ku! Can we coin that?? And, now imma have to check out Thug Notes. You are forever an inspiration – your wit and fun approach never fail.
Holy cow, Shaun! Rad poem, man!
Later, when the sun finally rises and I can rub some words together, Susie
I am with you, Susie! Will think about it later ))