Workshop

Angela Brown

The purpose of taking a poetry workshop course to learn how to write a poem. In this workshop,

I learned how to write and analyze a poetry slam and a spoken word poem. I took a four week course.

The first week of study I wrote a paper defining the difference between poetry slam and spoken word

poetry. I learned that a poetry slam poem is like a lyrical poem that is written in narrative form. I studied

Kanye West poem 18 years. I noticed that his poem was a poetry slam poem because it was written like

a song. It was a lyrical poem that used rhyme and meter. I learned a lot about meter, when I wrote the

poem, 18 Years. It was then I learned how to tell a story in a poem and to write it as if it were a lyrical

poem using meter. I learned a lot about punctuation in writing a poem is important to creating emphasis

in the poem to guide the reader. I also studied an elegy poem. An elegy poem is a poem that uses rhyme

and meter and is written in dedication to a person. The poem may be offensive. The poem, 18 years,

also was like an elegy poem because the poem was a dedication to a person. A spoken word poem is a

narrative poem that tells a story that some may find offensive. 18 years has a punch line that says that

bad relationships end up in the worst way. A bad relationship has consequences. In this poem Kanye

mother warned him of women who take advantage of men using them for their money. His mom said

that don’t make that mistake. It turned out for the worst. Kanye made a mistake and he killed her

because of a bad choice.

I studied the Elegy of a Churchyard in the second week. The poem had many images. It was

written like a poem with rhyme and meter. A spoken word poem is a lament poem dedicated to a dead

person. I studied about the elegy and ode poem in the second week of the workshop. I studied an Ode

to an Urn. The poem was a very sad poem that was full of images. An image in a poem are used to

describe something concrete. An image can be a visual, auditory response or it can be tactile, sensory or

something you can feel. When an image is used in a poem it is used so the reader can have a visual

interpretation to what the poet is saying.

Workshop
Angela Brown

In the poem, Elegy of a Churchyard, the poet writes about a dark graveyard and speaks a lot

about death in his poem. The poem was referenced how the wealthy are remembered and the

importance that the poor are not but should be treated the same. I wrote two poems that week, an

Elegy to Death and an Ode to Love.

The third week I was asked to rewrite an elegy and ode poem and to focus in on the imagery of

the poem. I wrote a poem on, an Ode to the Cock Roach and an Elegy to Love. I listened to and read the

poem about a rat. The poet performed her poem with a lot of emotion. It was an emotional poem about

how a rat lives. The poem was sort of offensive. The poem was full of images throughout the poem. It

was because of the images that made the poem affectionate to a rat. It was the punctuation that gave

the poem emphasis that the images were able to come alive in the poet’s performance of the poem. I

wrote an Ode to a Cock Roach. In my poem, I used images as well. The emotional attachment for the

roach was similar to the reader and the poet. It was a poem that everyone can relate to. It was offensive

to the reader because it was intentional to offend an audience. The poem had meter. The poem

included a rhyme scheme.

Each of the poems, an ode, an elegy, poetry slam and spoken word were poems that were full of

images. Another part of the lesson was to underline all the images of four poems. One thing I learned in

this lesson was about how to write imagery in a poem. It is important to use images as a technique to

arouse the reader’s senses.

The fourth week of the workshop I was asked to listen to three poetry slam poems. I was asked

to study the political poem. The poem, it won’t be televised, was a political poem about the depravity in

the news about minorities in issues like Black Lives Matter. The poem was negating the struggle over

poverty and neglect of minorities in the media. The poem suggested that the cause is being ignored and

alienated from society as if social and cultural biases is underrepresented and it does not matter in
Workshop
Angela Brown

politics anymore. I listened to a def. poetry slam video on, the Revolution. The poem mocked phrases

from former male rapper poems stating there will never be a revolution to male rappers when they

disrespect women’s values about sex. The poem claims women are underrepresented in these songs.

The poem refutes to be talked about in that way by men when she states that women will never accept

being degraded.

I wrote my own poem on the Revolution and titled it, twisted. In my poem, Twisted, I emphasize

a women’s worth, how women are disrespected by men and trying to define my feminism in the poem.

The elegy poem lets men know there is an alternative to how women are misrepresented and

disrespected. The poem is a lament to bad relationships. Women can be independent too. It is a political

poem about being a feminist.

Defining the purpose to teach is a job acquisition to learning that I learned from being a

laboratory assistant as well as from being a student. In my ode poem, defining my Purpose, the poem is

a spoken word poem. The poem is a dedication to what it means to be a teacher. The poems are

narrative poems. Anything can be written as a poem. I tried a different approach when writing the

poems. The poems are written in free verse. How the poem is written creates special meaning to the

line of the poem. A teacher is important to the student to promote the learning process. A single line in

this poem stresses the importance of topic. The words are like indirectly speaking about the character

and presentation. The lines of the poem are a point of reference back to the theme of the poem the

importance of teaching. There is a story that is outlined in the poem which entails the strengths and

weaknesses of teaching. It talks about what is a good teacher and it talks about how not everyone

benefits from a bad teaching. I had a teacher that once said that if I learned at least one thing in class

that was the benefit to a teacher, by hoping the student will learn anything in class at all. Understanding

everything is a good thing too.

Workshop
Angela Brown

I feel that I have met my purpose in taking your workshop. I learn a lot from reading and writing

experience. With this workshop, I have grown. I learned some new things about how to write a poem. I

learned how to write images. I learned how to write an elegy and an ode poem. I learned the difference

between a poetry slam poem and a spoken word poem. I learned about meter in writing the lyrical

poem. I learned the importance of how to rhyme in a poem. I have read some great poems in this

workshop. I studied the difference in writing styles in writing lyrical poetry and poetry slam. I learned

how to write a narrative story in a poem. I learned the importance of punctuation and line structure in a

poem. I learned descriptive words are an important element in writing imagery. I discovered a different

writing style that I can use in writing new poems. Most of all, I discovered more reasons why I learned

how much I love to read, listen and write poetry. The reason for me taking a poetry workshop is that I

benefit from the learning experiences that you give me.