This week in my Intro to Lit classes on Monday and Wednesday, we're having a poetry creating week. On Monday, we experimented with haiku-like creations. First I tried to have them create a haiku with no inspiration beyond the instruction to create 3 lines in the 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable model. Then we looked at photohaiku (I particularly like the ones at Dave Bonta's Woodrat Photohaiku website). I brought in 12 photos of my own, printed on regular white paper, and had the students work in groups to create their own photohaiku.
In the interest of transparency, I'll say that some of them were wonderful and some were, shall we say, not profound. Some students entered into the exercise fully, while others didn't add as much to their groups.
I told my students that one of the reasons that I scheduled this poetry week when I did was that it didn't require lots of prep work. Yesterday I laughed, as I was cutting individual lines from my abandoned lines document. Today, I'll hand every student 4- 6 strips of paper, each with a different line on it, and have them add lines to it. I have a poetry mad libs kind of assignment to help them generate lines to go with my abandoned lines. Then we'll tape them all together to see what we get.
It took me 45 minutes yesterday, and I didn't get all the cutting done. I also rounded up tape dispensers, and today, I'll get to class early so that I can get the tables arranged.
Even though it requires more prep work than I remembered, I'm still glad we'll be doing this today. As I cut up abandoned lines into slips of paper, I was surprised by some of them--did I really write these? Yes I did!
I plan to play with those abandoned lines too. I'm always surprised by the places that these abandoned lines take us.
Here are a few for you to play with too:
Sprout a pair of angel wings from your sturdy spine
This is not the angel song I strained to hear.
Well seasoned skillet and other seductions
Formless prayer beads on a tarnished chain
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