ENGL 369 Poetry Writing
Professor Lee Alexander

This workshop-based course allowed students to try their hands at a variety of poetic forms and styles, in order to establish their own poetic voice and also build a repertoire of poems with a view to future publication. Participants read a variety of classic and contemporary poems in a given genre, and then created their own works. One of the class exercises was to write poetry inspired by the words or illustrations of others, in this specific case by drawing from a rare or unique sampling of the extensive holdings of Swem’s Special Collections. Students were given an introduction to the materials on display and then further explored the item of their choice to write poetry somehow inspired by it. They were also encouraged to interpret broadly how and to what extent they would incorporate the materials into their own creations. Thus their newly created poems became part of an artistic conversation in which they responded to art through art, spanning in some cases many decades in-between.

Images of the exhibit are available from Special Collections on Flickr.

Exhibit design and installation: Jennie Davy, Burger Archives Specialist, with assistance from Andrew Cavell, SCRC Graphics Assistant, and Anna Wallace, Undergraduate Student Assistant.