Oak Meadow School

Creative Writing

Poetry

Text: Writing Poetry, by Shelley Tucker. You will need to purchase this book, possibly by ordering it from Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com.

Creative writing is the act of writing the truth about life--in prose or poetry, briefly or at great length--in a fashion which is so real that it captures the hearts and minds of the reader. The text that was read for the first semester of this course focused on the writing of prose (mostly); the text for the second semester will focus on poetry. Tucker’s Preface suggests many reasons for the writing of poetry. It is important to note that among those reasons is the following: “Poetry writing expands a writer’s creativity, and the principles of poetry enhance prose writing and speech” (p. iv). Some of the best prose, screenplays and plays, and speeches are acclaimed for their “poetic quality.” This semester’s work will seek to push the creative writer to new modes of expression in whatever media are selected for the creative writing process. The student can expect to spend approximately four hours per week on the work in this course.

This course will be built on three pillars; one of the three is much bigger than the rest:

1. The most important aspect of the course requires you to write: each week, you will submit your creative writing. This is the huge foundation for this course: you must write! You may write something different every week, or you may conceive of one larger project that will take you more than a week to complete (it can span the entire semester, for that matter), and you will turn in the work you have accomplished each week. Thus, it is not possible to do all of your writing crammed into a few weeks at the end of the term; you must write consistently all term long. You may write prose or poetry, stories or plays, fiction or nonfiction. You need not turn in “finished work” each two weeks: serious first drafts (even crummy first drafts that demonstrate hard work and serious effort) are fine. A reworked first draft can also be the work that you submit for a particular week. The teacher will be looking for serious effort (a minimum of three hours per week is expected of the student), and the product submitted must demonstrate the seriousness of the effort. The point is, write! Get it?

2. You will be working in Writing Poetry, by Shelley Tucker. Make sure that you read both the Preface and the Introduction. There are nine two-week periods over the course of the semester. Those two-week blocks are numbered, and the assignments from the text are given to you.

#1 -- Unit 1 “Metaphors.” Do the “Writing Metaphors” exercise on pp. 5-7. Then choose ONE exercise from among “Writing Extended Metaphors” (pp. 10-11), “Writing Metaphors about People” (pp. 13-16), and “Metaphors About Thoughts and Emotions” (pp. 16-20).

#2 -- Unit 3 “Personification.” Do the “Personification Naming Human Actions” exercise on pp. 37-39. Do “Describe Things as People” on pp. 41-42. Choose ONE of the remaining three activities in the Unit.

#3 -- Unit 4 “Imagery.” Do “Imagery Through Action Verbs” on pp. 54-55, and “Writing with Detail,” on p. 59.

#4 -- Unit 5 “Alliteration.” Do “Writing with Alliteration” on pp. 64-65.

#5 -- Unit 7 “Repetition.” Do the exercise on p. 77.

#6 -- Unit 11 “Meter.” Do “Metrical Feet,” on pp. 109-110. Choose TWO of the eight activity ideas in “Writing in Meter,” p. 118.

#7 -- Unit 12 “Tone.” Do the exercise “Creating a Tone,” p. 121, except you are not limited to writing a poem to accomplish the assignment. A paragraph of prose that clearly creates a tone will do just as well. Do the exercise “Writing Absurdity,” on p. 123.

#8 -- Unit 13 “Synesthesia.” Do the exercise “Writing Synesthesia.”

#9 -- Unit 14 “Symbol.” Do the “Symbols” exercise on pp. 135-136. Do TWO of the exercises under the “Writing with Symbols” activity on p. 137

It is expected that each of these unit studies will take about two hours .