For our most recent unit in PLP we have been focussing on poetry, to be more specific, the literary devices, forms, types, and styles of poetry including beat poetry and certain beat poets from the beat era. Just in case you don’t know what beat poetry is, it was a literary movement started by a group of American poets and authors, their work analyzed and changed American culture and politics in the post-war era. Most of their work was present throughout the 1950s.
Just to give you a little more information on this unit, “How can we express our perspectives on beliefs, values, and norms through poetry?” Would be our driving question carefully crafted by our teacher for this unit; Ms. Maxwell. Also, throughout this unit, we would be creating our own original poems on whatever we wanted, using certain literary devices we would be learning about through the unit, and at the ent of the unit we would present 6 of them to the public on stage at our first PLP exhibition of the year, the winter exhibition!
Our first project to plunge us into the topic of beat poetry would be to write, record, and upload a spoken word poem that we created. This was to help us understand the common process taken when creating poetry.
Also, throughout this project we would be introduced to certain literary devices, we would be taking notes on these devices to help us in creating better poems. These devices would be essential to know in order to succeed in creating proper poetry. One significant assignment to help us learn more about poetry was our “bio of a beat” project. For this project, we were allowed to choose either a podcast, essay, or some other creative representation of a certain significant beat poets life, we would have to include their early life, how they got into poetry, give examples of some of their work, and give an overview of their career and involvement in the beat generation. For this assignment I chose to do a podcast, mostly because of the fact that I find it easier speaking about something than actually writing about it. I decided to do my podcast on the legendary poet, Allen Ginsberg, who was a famously influential, raw, and groundbreaking poet from the beat generation.
This project definitely strengthened my historical perspective as demonstrated in my podcast. I also learned a lot about the culture in the 1950’s through this project, times were tough, especially for people against the Vietnam war, it was also a very drug induced time, as LSD was being used very commonly among anti-war protester and poets alike.
One big thing I think I improved on in this project was how to master vocal audio, it was nice being able to fiddle with mastering vocals in a podcast format using the knowledge I have gained in sound design recently, I really enjoyed applying my knowledge in this way. I thought my podcast turned out pretty well in the end.
Another big assignment we had during this unit was our literary analysis “test”, this wasn’t necessarily a test, it was mostly to show what we learned about the beat generation and our literary devices we had been studying for the past few weeks. I went into the test very confident in my knowledge of literary devices and history of the beat generation. This obviously didn’t turn out to be true because i didn’t end up doing that well on the test. It was obvious that i missed some points on literary devices, but i accurately depicted the beat generation.
For the exhibition, we were put in groups to help streamline how we would transform our room into a poetry and performance stage/theatre. I was put in the sound design group, I helped set up the stage, speakers, drum kit, and other musical equipment the night of. I would also be performing some jazz music the night of with other band members in PLP.
After weeks of poetry curation, rehearsals, planning, and preparation, we we’re finally ready for the exhibition!
not going to lie I was quite nervous before going on stage to perform my poem poems but I pushed through the anxiety and went on to perform my poems at pride I personally thought I did a great job. I actually had a great night of the exhibition being able to present in front of people with my classmates and friends was actually quite enjoyable and I am looking forward to our next big PLP event whether that be a field study or another exhibition.
All in all, this unit taught me a huge amount about poetry whether it be from poets from the beat generation to literary devices to conflicts going on during the beat generation to the culture in the 50s or to just learning how to speak in front of a huge audience, I have bettered my understanding of these things a significant amount and I am grateful to have had this unit for our last unit of the first trimester.