Inside and Outside

Our first poem on the next day was to create a poem by travelling inside ourselves where we met our essence, our souls. We were then to write a poem about that very experience.

Afterwards, we walked over (in the freezing cold) to the nearby park to write poem number two. This one was to be written about what we saw only. No inside voice.

So that's how I got to write Inside and Outside. Again, I prefer the first poem, and I'm interested in what you think.

Love and Death

Poetry is often a way used to express feeling of love. Anyone remember Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? We had to go outside and pick a random object and bring it back to class. We then had to write a poem (our first on our own) comparing this object to something bigger. My object was a leaf (it is fall. There's lots of them around). I compared it to my unnamed love. I called it, Undying Love.

We then had to do the opposite: Choose a broad topic and compare it to something small. There was a tree by the school being cut down, so I decided to write my poem on Death and compare it to the tree. It's called, The Inevitable.

I personally like the first one better. What's your opinion?

Poetry

Poetry is creativity. At least the good ones are. Poems show off emotions, or thought, or ideas, generally through the uses of metaphors. Personality, I prefer reading poetry over writing it. The phase, "let's write poetry" scares me. But not so much anymore. Over the past few days in class, we've done many different exercises to help switch thoughts from the front of our brains to the back. The back is where creativity comes. Right after doing those exercises, writing poetry didn't seem so hard. Mind you, I generally gained a head-ache during the process. I still prefer to write stories over poetry, but I believe these exercises will help with my short story writing as well. the whole point of them was to activate our creativity, which can come out in many other ways than just writing, such as art and sports. Overall, maybe this poetry unit wasn't and isn't so bad after all.
Here is the first poem we wrote in the class. Each one of us put two phrases on the board and we then had to create a poem from those lines, using every line but a few. Mine is titled The Five Senses.
A few days later, I wrote another poem about senses. We were blindfolded and had to walk around like that. This is the poem I wrote in response.

Thinking About Nothing Can Help You Write

Let me explain. Today in class, we did an exercise in which we closed off the front part of our brains and used the side parts (the parts where creativity comes from). We then wrote. First a journal entry with a pretty wide range of ideas. Then a group poem about fall. As far as the poem is concerned, the lines we came up with were good, but I would have liked time to organize them, not just shove them together. The journal was easier to write. I didn't feel as if I was at a lost for words, which I usually do when I write. So maybe thinking nothing can be a cure to block the writers block that we all experience.

Commenting on News Articles

Opposite Editorials (Op Eds) are an opinion piece written based on a hard-news article. The hard-news article that I chose to connect with was my own written about the GSA. I titled my Op Ed, Why Must There Always be a Fight? Yes, this article is written based upon my own opinion and you may feel differently. Maybe this will inspire you to write an Op Ed, perhaps to contradict me. Enjoy your reading and writing!

Communicating News Worthy Items

Every day there are events that happen that deserve to be shared. But how do you share them? Word of mouth can work wonders, but details could end up being changed over time, like the telephone game. By writing these stories down, we can share all of the details, and the correct details. I wrote my 'hard news story' on the new club at EDSS called, The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).