The Tortured Poets Department Inspired Poetry Packs for National Poetry Month and Album Release (April 19)

On Friday, April 19th, Taylor Swift will release her 11th album titled The Tortured Poets Department. It is releasing in the middle of National Poetry Month. There is a theme. To celebrate and for a great tween and teen program idea, I am making Tortured Poets Department inspired poetry packs. I love the idea of having tweens and teens make their own poetry packs to carry around for moments of inspiration. As a librarian, a lover of poetry and a Swiftie, I am so ecstatic to see all my loves and interests come together in such a beautiful way. I write poetry and have made a poetry pouch to carry around to jot down my poetry when a thought comes to me.

What you will need:

• Various Taylor Swift themed stickers, purchased in bulk off of Amazon (or poetry themed ones!)
• Small sized notebooks
• Pens
• Friendship bracelets (or friendship bracelet making station)
• Poetry pouches (instructions below)
• Poetry! (some fun poetry crafts are referenced at the end of this post)
• Sharpie permanent markers for the coloring variant if desired

A note about what to include:

You can buy a pack of mini composition notebooks around 3 for $1.50 and they fit perfectly. And I love Flair pens, a couple in different colors. But they are a bit more costly so buy according to budget. But these are great for budding poets to carry in the poetry pouches and jot down poetry as they feel inspired.

To Make the Poetry Pouch:

You can buy bulk, blank pencil pouches on Amazon. For example, you can buy 50 blank canvas bags for $29.99 here. This would make your pouch cost about $0.60 per pouch.

For this, you can either do sublimation or vinyl heat transfer. So if you have a makerspace with a Cricut or Silhouette Cameo, that works. I recently have gotten into sublimation printing (which I’m going to blog about soon), and will never look back. BUT, vinyl transfer also works.

For this pouch, you can create any type of poetry inspired design in Canva, or whatever design program that you use. I made the above example in this post for my own personal use. You can include any poetry quote of interest. There is a list of quotes about poetry here to inspire you. You can even put something as simple as the words “poetry” or your name on your pouch. Many Swifties will have their favorite Taylor Swift lyrics that they’ll want to bring to life on their poetry pouch. I love making crafts as open ended as possible so teens can personalize items and express themselves.

I then went through the heat transfer steps, which will vary depending on what type of pouch you decide to make. When doing a heat transfer, the temperature and time varies depending on supplies used and they are very important. A quick Google search can lead you to a lot of crafting blogs where people share their temp/time charts depending on what type of heat transfer you are doing.

Some of my pouch designs are below. The one is not poetry related but makes a great make up bag and I just love it.

You can also color and decorate your pouches directly with Sharpies if you don’t have access to a vinyl cutter or sublimation printer. I have used Sharpies to fill in many a design when the transfer process doesn’t go quite right. You just want to put something inside the pouch as you color so the ink doesn’t go all the way through to the other side. Fine tip markers are your friend here.

Another variant is that you can pre-sublimate some pouches with words like “poetry”, “deep thoughts”, etc. and allow your teens to color them in with Sharpies and doodle on them. This is a good combination of both worlds and allows you to keep the high heat out of the program and prepare some pouches in advance. The open font ones above are great for coloring as suggested. A big, open block font is what you are looking for. In Canva, Hussar Ekologiczky is my favorite for this type of activity. Yearbook Outline and Blueberry Outline are also top contenders.

Friendship Bracelet Making Station:

An ongoing theme of the Eras tour has been the making and trading of friendship bracelets. You can set up a bracelet making station with stretch cord, various beads, and various letter beads.

Basic Friendship Bracelet Making Supplies:

• Clay Beads or Small Round Pearl Like Beads (or both!)
• Small letter beads
• Stretchy cord
• Bead charms, if wanted
• Scissors
• Super glue

To make your friendship bracelets, you’re basically going to string your beads on a piece of stretchy cord cut to size. Then tie a knot once you are done to close it off. The only tip I will share about making friendship bracelets is to put a drop of super glue on your finishing knot to help keep it together.

Polaroid Printers and Photo Props:

Polaroid or instant photos are a big part of the Taylor Swift aesthetic. In fact, at one point there was even a Taylor Swift branded instant camera, which I sadly do not own.

You can take your own Polaroid/instant style photos using either a modern day Polaroid or an Instax Mini. However, I recommend taking your own photos and printing to a Instax printer instead. They have a Mini, Square and Wide version. This allows you to get the same aesthetic while having greater control of the way the final picture looks. Polaroid/Instax Mini pics are expensive per photo (around $1 each) but the cameras themselves are notoriously finicky and I hate getting a bad photo. Using a cell phone and sending it to the printer gives you greater control of the outcome and allows you to achieve the same finished look. I have all 3 sizes and highly recommend them. They are easy to use and IT LETS YOU EDIT YOUR PHOTO TO LOOK EXACTLY HOW YOU WANT IT TO SO YOU DON’T WASTE A PRINT. In fact, you can edit your photo in any photo app adding any effects and then print.

You can find Taylor Swift themed photo booth props on Amazon or Etsy. You can also buy photo backgrounds like a cloudy sky, which is very 1989, to make a background.

Come back to TLT tomorrow to learn some additional DIY craft ideas for displaying your instant photos.

POETRY ACTIVITIES:

Since this album is poetry coded, you can do a lot of fun poetry activities:

• Book Spine Poetry
• Sidewalk Chalk Poetry
• Black Out Poetry
• Make Your Own Magnetic Poetry Kit

Check out these past posts for Poetry Crafts and Ideas

TPiB: Poetry Crafts!

TPIB: Poetically Speaking!

TPiB: MakerSpace Poetry

And that is how we host a Taylor Swift album release party and celebrate poetry!

Post edited 4/15/2024 to add the note about coloring and share some templates

Filed under: National Poetry Month, Poetry