English 271: Class Snapshot
Course Title: Creative Writing - Poetry I
Professor: Dr. Donika Kelly
In Creative Writing Poetry, we are introduced to new writing techniques to form unique styles in our poetry. In this class, our poetry skills are developed through daily exercises, workshops, and reading poetry collections. These collections are a variety of celebrated poems and poets. Consistent participation is expected and welcomed by Dr. Kelly and other students, especially in workshops. It is through the required workshops that we acquire the most helpful input and feedback on our poems. Through reading the poetry collections, we find new inspirations and poetic techniques that help advance our writing skills. Our poetic language is also developed through learning crafts, such as concrete details, voice, figurative language, lineation, sound, and form. Combined, these skills allow us to comprehensively advance our writing skills in poetry.
Through the required readings in Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, we learn poetic skills and read poems that correlate with these skills. Many of our daily writing exercises are correlated with the skills that Oliver discusses in the book. Kaveh Akbar’s Portrait of the Alcoholic, Marie Howe’s Magdalene, Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia, and Gwendolyn Brooks’ A Street in Bronzeville are the other required texts of the class. These are relatively short poetry collections that give us a variety of poems to imitate and learn skills from. Normally, I do not enjoy reading poetry, but reading these collections have made me appreciate the art more. Dr. Kelly usually asks for three volunteers to read their daily exercises and sometimes people are hesitant about reading their work. Admirably, Dr. Kelly established the idea that she will not judge and criticize our poems. Instead, she and the rest of the class will discuss what is working and what is not working in your poems. Although Dr. Kelly does not grade these exercises, they are filed away in a portfolio that we are required to hand in at the end of the semester. Then she holds individual conferences with us to discuss our writing progress
The workshop portion of the class is the most helpful process to me. We sign up for one of two groups: Group A or Group B. The groups consist of about eight people in my class and the writers in Group A have their stories workshopped first. When you workshop, you are required to print out as many copies as needed for everybody in the class including Dr. Kelly. The eight people in the group bring their poems in and pass them out. The class takes these poems home and read each of them twice, out loud. Then, we are required to write a ‘letter’ to the poet. Starting with a summary about what we thought the poem was about, we continue with specific examples of what worked well in the poem, we form a ‘compliment sandwich’ and end the letter with specific examples of what could use more work. Dr. Kelly emphasizes the notion that we should not say that we like something or that we don’t like something because it does not matter. She reminds us constantly that we’re meant to focus on structure and style—not our personal preference. These letters are not meant to be long, only about a third of a page and they need to be finished by the next class. During the following class, we pass the letters stapled to the poems back to the poets. The poets read their poems and we discuss what is working and what could be worked on.
I have never been a fan of writing and reading poetry, but this class has made me enjoy poetry more. Through the interesting poetry collections and daily exercises, my appreciation for poetry has increased and my skills as a poet have advanced. I would recommend this class to anybody who wishes to enjoy writing and reading poetry and has an interest in advancing their skills to find their unique poetic style.
