Could your students read and "imitate" Thomas' work.
Thomas’ webpage reads: “Larry D. Thomas, born and reared in West Texas, has resided in Houston since 1967. He moved from West Texas to Houston at the age of twenty to complete his college education, and graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 with a BA degree in English literature. In 1998, he retired from a career in adult criminal justice, the last fifteen years of which he served as a branch director for the Harris County Adult Probation Department (Houston). Since his retirement, he has been employed as a full-time poet.
Mr. Thomas started writing poetry seriously in the early 1970’s during his four-year tour of duty in the U. S. Navy. He spent his entire tour in Norfolk, Virginia, serving as a correctional counselor in the Navy prison. Immediately after his stint in the Navy, he secured employment with the Harris County Adult Probation Department where he rose from the rank of probation officer first to unit supervisor and ultimately to branch director, the position he maintained until his retirement in 1998. He wrote consistently on weekends during his thirty-one year career in social service and adult criminal justice, and was quite successful during that period of time in placing his poems in numerous respected national literary journals. His first collection of poetry, The Lighthouse Keeper, was published by Timberline Press in late 2000, approximately three years after his retirement, and was selected by the Small Press Review as a “pick-of-the-issue” (May/June 2001). He has since that time published four additional collections of poems which have received several prestigious prizes and awards.”
The Lighthouse Keeper (Timberline Press, 2001)
Amazing Grace (Texas Review Press, 2001)
The Woodlanders (Pecan Grove Press, 2002)
Where Skulls Speak Wind (Texas Review Press, 2004)
Stark Beauty (Timberline Press, 2005)
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