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Abstract: The paper presents reading a poetic text as a complex cognitive activity of constructing underspecified meanings of a message expressed in a linguistically unconventional form. The reader’s meaning-construction activity is analyzed in terms of dynamic forming and reforming of conceptual content of language units, functioning in the unconventional speech context. The research aims at investigating the pedagogical value of a poetic text usage for developing linguistic creativity in schoolchildren at the lessons of language and literature. The research is based on the interdisciplinary approach combining methodological principles of cognitive linguistics, creativity linguistics, text linguistics and the language acquisition theory. The paper describes pedagogical conditions for developing different aspects of linguistic creativity (verbal fluency, flexibility and originality), which are regarded to be necessary for constructing the meanings of separate nonce-words as individual poetic signs and of the poem as a poetic whole. Genrikh Sapgir’s poems have been selected as the research material suitable for illustrating nonce-words functioning as the meaningful complexes of unconventional form and content, which trigger lingua-creative process of meaning construction in the reader’s perceiving mind. The paper presents the analysis of several types of lingua-creative tasks, including tasks encouraging pupils (1) to define derivational and lexical motivation for constructing the meaning of poetic nonce-words, (2) to identify and analyze the speech context of nonce-words use, (3) to formulate nonce-words definitions taking into account their inner word-building context and outer speech context, (4) to produce their own nonce-words complementary to the theme, artistic idea and stylistics of the poem. The paper summarizes the subject and the meta-subject results of schoolchildren’s learning activity. It is concluded that development of lingua-creative thinking by means of intensive reading is to be organized according to the principle of the readers’ «reflexive exit» and conscious awareness of their meaning-construction activity.