POETRY - Papers and Conferences
Artful Inquiry Symposium 2016
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Writing Circles, Readings, Chap Books:
A Community of Practice Abstract: Poetry is an odd and often contrived thing for many people… Speaking from personal experience as a reader of poetry, I hold many conflicting ideas about it simultaneously. I frequently regard the poetry I read as artificial, trite and self-serving but sometimes the layers of language, the nuances and shades of meaning combine in ways that communicate more than a thought or an emotion. They communicate something more than the semantics of the text ordinarily allow, put me in touch with something previously unknown, or resonate with something I previously had no words for. The result is either a momentous connection with the poet or a mysterious disconnection from my present reality into the created one. It strikes me as incongruous that many self-professed writers of poetry are not often active readers of poetry. In contrast, active readers of poetry are often active members in a community of poetic practice that involve participating in writing circles, giving and listening to public readings, and reviewing, editing and publishing within their local and extended communities. Not surprisingly, each of these three activities involves reading and listening to other poets’ work. Each involves a present and personal time commitment that puts the self in relation with and in the service of others. Each also provides a social context in which poetry is naturally at home. In a real sense, a community of poetic practice is the practice of copoiesis. In my paper, I will outline how poetry may be taught in school, based on poetic practices modeled in the community today, and those based in part on the practices of the Modernist Montreal poets such as Louis Dudek. |
Jean-Paul Dionne Symposium 2016
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Song Comes First:
Developing Poetic Literacy through Critical Multi-Modal Dialog Abstract: Some song lyrics are unarguably poems, for example those of Leonard Cohen. Framing poetry as song lyrics and re-framing poetic literacy as a dialog with the song writer can change the motivational biases of students claiming to be uninterested in poetry to one of interest, and can increase students literacy with poetic forms. An interesting question arises if one considers the development of poetic literacy through a Post Humanist lens (Haraway, Latour, Wolfe). The focus becomes one of interaction and dialog with an emphasis on making meaning together with the poet (co-poiesis) and of appreciating the rich knowledge readers bring to the poem that poets expect of their readers (inter-textuality). By taking advantage of readers' extent interest in popular songs, and by legitimizing reader's ability to bring their own experiences to bear, an appeal can be made that it is a reader's responsibility to create meaning with the song writer through the lyrics. This privileges the act of dialog between the songwriter and reader. To facilitate this dialog, Transactional, Cognitive, New Literacy theories (Louise Rosenblatt, Pamela Tierney, George Lakoff, Benjamin Bergen) are informative as is the research of Bailey, 2009; George, 2002; McVee, Bailey, and Shanahan, 2008. Negotiation and articulation of meanings is multi-modal to help sensitize readers to their own responses to the lyrics. Readers select and arrange internet images in a geometric pattern to represent the relationships between the song's surface content and its deeper meaning to produce a content map; level 1 is a personal knowledge response. Next they look-up words/terms they don't know and update their content map again; level 2 is a response to external data. Finally they share/discuss their map with peers after which they update their maps a third time; level 3 is an interactive social response. Their dialog with the poet is now made visible! ![]()
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