The Last-Place Sports Poems of Jeremy Bloom

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Middle-school readers first met Jeremy Bloom in The D-Poems of Jeremy
Bloom, in which the reluctant Grade 6 poet unwittingly enrolled in Ms.
Terranova’s poetry class. In this sequel, the newly married Terranova
(now Stegowitz) gives 7th grader Jeremy an opportunity to raise his
previous year’s mark by joining her poetry-writing workshop. This
time, Jeremy elects to write poems about team sports. The book’s 40
poems are arranged chronologically to reflect sports seasons: football,
soccer, hockey, basketball, and baseball. Readers who were initially
invited to decide whether Jeremy’s misbehavior contributed to his low
poetry grades must now consider whether the mishaps associated with Mrs.
Stegowitz’s attendance at just one game per sport are responsible for
the losing streaks experienced by Jeremy’s teams.

Although not as humorous as the original collection and sometimes more
mature in content, this book will still lure reluctant poetry readers,
especially males. Senior-year teachers should also mine its contents for
individual poems. Recommended.