Assignment – Emilia Phillips

September 28, 2017September 28, 2017

Writing Exercise: “Praise House”

ENG 326 Writing Poetry: Intermediate
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Fall 2017

Note: My intermediate poetry class is wrapping up workshop on their third poems and they are getting ready to turn in their fourth workshop poems this Saturday. This exercise is meant to allow them time and space to try something new (some have wondered aloud about if there can be “happy” poems) and draft something they can develop into their workshop piece. I always allow my students to revise in-class writing into their workshop poems, as this gives the class (optional) scaffolding of their assignments and helps to alleviate pressure surrounding “writer’s block.” (Side note: I don’t believe in writer’s block, as it often boils down to students second guessing themselves before they even begin, but they believe in it, so I want to help them overcome that fear in whatever way I can.)

9/28 Writing Exercise: “Praise House”

Read “Praise House: The New Economy” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi and “To a Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” by Ross Gay.
Freewrite a poem in which you praise a moment or a whole lot of things that you love or for which you are grateful.
- Note: This exercise introduces you to a new form, the praise poem, while also giving you the option of continuing to cultivate your skills at using a poetic catalog (i.e., a list) in your poems.

October 6, 2016October 6, 2016

“Imitation” Exercise for Poetry Workshop

In this exercise, my Poetry Workshop students are introduced to poetic imitations by imitating the poems from the October 2016 issue of Poetry they chose to present in class.

September 7, 2016September 23, 2016

Writing Exercise: “Of Violins and Violence” for Poetry Workshop

With a subscription to Poetry magazine as one of the required texts for my Poetry Workshop class, students will have read “Violins” by Rowan Ricardo Phillips prior to completing this exercise, “Of Violins and Violence,” based around the tension between similar sounding words.

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014

“Why Is Poetry Relevant?” Flash Essay Assignment

Salvador Dali illustrates Montaigne’s “Of Vanity” (1947)

Class: Writing Poetry (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Genre: Poetry

Purpose: To encourage students to look for the relevancy of their studies to culture; to consider the effects that poetry has on readers; and to explore their own motivations for seeking out poetry instruction.

Readings: Poetry‘s July/August 2014 issue that includes poems by Dean Young, Philip Fried, D.A. Powell, Traci Brimhall, Devin Johnston, Rosanna Warren, Amanda Calderon, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Rickey Laurentiis, Timothy Donnelly, and Alice Fulton

I’ve asked my students to write at least 500 words on “Why Is Poetry Relevant?” after they read Poetry‘s July/August 2014 issue this weekend. On Thursday, we talked a little bit about our expectations for what poetry is, can be—that many people believe that poetry was something impenetrable and written a century or more ago. My hope is that they will investigate this question on their own and arrive at a diverse conclusions on why poetry is relevant. With that, I’ll point you back to the opening of my Writing Poetry course description as a clue for this assignment’s motivations:

American poet C.D. Wright once wrote: “If I wanted to understand a culture, my own for instance . . . I would turn to poetry first. For it is my confirmed bias that the poets remain the most ‘stunned by existence,’ the most determined to redeem the world in words.” In this course, we will hold poetry to this noble standard, as an amplifier for the voices in our culture and an invocatory rendering of our world.