How I’m A Poet And Didn’t Even Know It

To finish off the first term, PLP 11 completed a unit combining Star Wars with poetry, guided by the driving question: How can we use poetry to reflect our perspectives on people, places, issues and beliefs? Our goal for the project was to learn how this question can be answered through learning about the poets of the Beat generation, an influential period in poetic history. We would then be creating our very own poetry and presenting it at the Star Wars winter exhibition where our room would be transformed in to the Cantina! First however, we needed to learn about poetry itself.

One of the first things we did as a class once starting this unit, was a daily free-write. We would be given a topic (for example, your best vacation), then be allotted a certain amount of time to just write, without hesitation or corrections. The aim of this was to help us practice tapping in to a more honest and creative side of our brain, to help us with our poetry in the long run. I quite enjoyed these free-writes, and found myself writing in ways I normally wouldn’t.

After continuing to learn a bit about literary devices and other poetic tools, we were tasked with an assignment called Bio Of A Beat. In this assignment, we would choose a poet/writer from the Beat Generation, and research them, before creating either a video, podcast, or essay about their life and cultural impact. I chose a very famous Beat poet; Jack Kerouac. I knew right from the start that I wanted to create a podcast. It had been a while since I had done one, and seeing as I had recently become quite interested in podcasts, I figured it could be good fun. 

Both fortunately and unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I was set to be heading down to California the weekend this assignment was to be completed on. This made things a tad harder, but I managed to get it done, and with a level of quality I was very happy with if I’m being honest. I had to skip out on a couple fun activities to get my script done, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. I ended up recording and editing the podcast in our rental car and I must say it was pretty good for the situation I was dealing with. 

Next up was a close analysis of a poem to test our knowledge on literary devices. I felt confident going in to it, as I felt and still feel as though I have a solid understanding of literary tools. When it came time for the analysis, I was comfortable with the first of the two poems, though the second one was a little bit harder to decipher. This was shown in my overall mark, as Ms. Maxwell faulted me for my confusion towards the overall message of the poem. Other than that, I feel like I have a pretty strong understanding of literary devices, so it was a shame I only got 16/20 because of something less related to literary comprehension.

From there on out, the exhibition was all that was on our radar. It was full steam ahead with writing and creating our set of poems, as well as designing the room for the exhibition. By this point, most of us, including me, had already written multiple poems, so creating the set of poems was more-so a task of writing a few more and putting the book together. Some of my favourite poems that I included in my collection were some of the first to be written. As I didn’t have enough, I had to allocate some time to just sit down and write some more poems to complete my collection. Once I had done that, I spent a lot of time formatting and putting my book together, because I knew that I wanted to actually print it out and bind it, as oppose to just creating an e-book version. This is an option I wouldn’t normally take up, but I decided I may as well because I was pretty inspired by some poetry books I had seen previously. Ms. Maxwell was quite happy with the decision I made to create a physical copy, which was rewarding knowing how much time I put in to the whole thing.

Although my poems were finished, this project was far from over, as we still had the exhibition to pull off. The class was split up in to various groups, each group having a certain role within the room for the exhibition. Adlih, Logan and I were put in the lighting group, and we all found it to be a little bit of a struggle in terms of knowing where to source the lights. None of us felt like we needed to spend money on the exhibition, so we did our best to find and bring what lights we had that could have worked for the Star Wars Cantina theme. 

To be fair, I definitely didn’t put as much effort as I probably could have in terms of my contributions to the Cantina. However, when it came time for exhibition night, I was non-stop working to make the whole thing run smoothly. I worked extra hard to make up for may lack of physical contributions with my laborious contributions. This helped to take my mind off my poetry presentation, easing my nerves. When it came time for me to get on stage however, I was undoubtedly a tad nervous, as all of us were. As soon as I got through the first couple stanzas however, I felt calm and relaxed. This made the next time I went up to recite a poem – Act 2 – much more casual in my mind.

All in all, although there was a few rough patches where it seemed like we had hit a wall, we managed to push through and pull the whole thing off. It never ceases to amaze me how we always get the job done, and even better than everyone expected. I had a great time with this whole unit, and genuinely found myself understanding our core competencies like Historical Perspectives a lot more thoroughly. And after the success of the exhibition, getting to watch Star Wars the following day was the icing on the cake!