Writing Exercise: “Code Switch” Read a little bit about the linguistic concept of “code-switching.” Now, let’s apply it to your creative writing. Create a dramatic situation in which a first-person narrator has to switch between two different types of language in her narration and in her dialogue, e.g. her dialogue with her best friend is […]
Ears Roaring with Many Things: A Creative Writing Teaching Blog
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Summer Online Intro to CW Writing Exercise: “Nothing Amiss, Nothing Missed”
Writing Exercise: “Nothing Amiss, Nothing Missed” Your first writing exercise asks you to draw upon the concepts of concrete language, significant details, and mood-inducing setting from Chapters 2: Image and 5: Setting. The exercise is multi-part, so make sure not to miss a step. Take a pen and paper (or laptop, if you’re more comfortable […]
Failed Ideas Rise Again!
I’m compiling a document called “Ignoratio Elenchi” (“missing the point”) with fragments of interesting things that framed failed poems. My hope is that this daisy-chain of failed, poetic dramatic situations will come together as something new, maybe a lyric essay on and demonstrating failure. This project must be something like a grappa, that liquor made […]
Text & Context: A Poetry Workshop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Last night I taught Text & Context, a poetry workshop sponsored by the Philadelphia Poetry Collaboration, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘s Final Fridays: Rebel, Rebel night. I prepared a handout with four poetry exercises inspired by pieces in the modern art wing of the museum for registered and drop-in participants. We had a total […]
Craft of Poetry Writing Exercise: “Thank You”
Writing Exercise: “Thank You” Select a single line or image from one of Jenny Johnson’s poems in In Full Velvet. Free write a poem that begins with this line or image co-opted from Johnson. This can be phrased exactly the same way that she phrases it, or you can change it up to best suit […]
Poetry Writing Exercise: “Don’t Be Afraid: Self-Elegy or Self-Celebration” for Master Class I Have Been a Pleasure: On the Self-Elegy and Celebration
Today, before a reading, I will teach a poetry master class at Warren County Community College called I Have Been a Pleasure: On the Self-Elegy and Celebration. With a handout, we will begin by considering and reconsidering the definitions of elegy, praise poems, and ode from Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary, making connections between each […]
Erasure and Revision Exercise: “Dear ________”
Students in my online, 24PearlStreet “Every Phantom // A Story: Erasure and Revision” course explored erasure as a political and social justice act and then completed “Dear ,” an erasive poetry exercise, last week after reading the following assignments: “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure” by Solmaz Sharif. […]
Short Film Adaptation of a Poem for Lit to Film
This semester I am teaching Literature to Film, and I’ve assigned the following Short Film Adaptation of a Poem in order to offer my students, who come to the class from all majors, a chance to engage with poetry in a way they haven’t before, through a multimodal project that connects to our upcoming visiting […]
Erasure and Revision Writing Exercise: “Love Poem Lost”
Last week I had my 24PearlStreet Erasure and Revision students burn, soak, and rip up handwritten copies of a new love poem. I called these “environmental erasures,” inspired— or, rather, after—Sappho’s surviving verses on papyrus fragments. Here are the directions: “Love Poem Lost” 1. Draft a poem addressed to a (real or imagined) lost love. […]
Teen Arts Workshop Writing Exercises: “Beyond Rhyme: Poetry’s Music” and “Speech Bubbles: Poetry 10 Ways”
The Warren County Cultural & Heritage Commission asked me to teach as a part of their Teen Arts day. Although post-blizzard school delays prevented us from taking full advantage of my two planned workshops, the exercises and lesson plans I prepared for the day are collected here for other educators’ use. 9:30–11:00 AM: Beyond Rhyme: […]
