As a man who writes poetry as a hobby, I am continually in search of new sources of inspiration and new techniques to be able to remove creative blocks. I have found the free writing activities our class has undertaken to be extremely enlightening. In most of these exercises, I have felt as if I was able to produce respectable work in a relatively short period of time. However, there was one free writing activity during which I felt my quality of writing dropped significantly: the group writing exercise where we would begin with a character sketch and pass our work to a classmate who would continue the story. Read more Free Writing
Poetry, Critical Literacy, and the Classroom
For many, poetry can be the bane of English class. Having to interpret passages of complex and figurative language nonliterally can often seem confusing (especially to those who tend to think linearly), and interpretations on a single poem may vary considerably from person to person. However, the act of interpreting the meaning of the words—the thought process behind forming an opinion on the piece—is more complex in poetry than in most other written art forms, which gives it a distinct advantage. Read more Poetry, Critical Literacy, and the Classroom