When asked by a principal to design a workshop for ELA and ESL teachers on addressing new ESL regulations, the author suggested that they offer professional development that might inspire teachers to try new practices that could help their students grow as writers. The author decided to devote a workshop not to rules and regulations, but to poetry. In this article, the author discusses how the author develops a workshop that aims to demystify poetry so that teachers might see it as a vehicle to get their ELL students to express themselves while experimenting with playful ways of using language. The author describes how poetry is used in professional development for secondary ESL and ELA teachers. (Contains 2 figures.)