Three Collaborative Poetry Activities
How to Play With Language For a Break From NaNoWriMo
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash
It’s a cold rainy day in Kentucky. A good day to write or a good day to despair of writing? Both postures are always present in my classroom: no group of writers, even during a community event like NaNoWriMo, will be on the same vibe all the time.
So it’s a challenge to bring writing inspiration to students who are already doing a lot of writing, yet might need a breather from their novel and chance to stretch into a different mode of writing to break the labor of fiction writing.
To that end, I like to offer a few low stakes writing activities. They can choose which one they think they’ll benefit from, either to get out of their own head or have some fun with other students while still doing some language work. All the exercises require writing, collaboration and language negotiation, revision, speaking and listening, which makes them rich in community building as well.
Exercise 1: Poetry Cards
Two students pair up and each gets twenty blank index cards. Student A writes twenty concrete nouns on his cards (camera, rug, wreath, parking lot, shovel, and so on) and Student B writes twenty active, present-tense verbs on her cards (flail, barge, scream, bark, shrivel, and so on). After creating their cards, they arrange the cards in a single stack upside down in front of them. Then Student A turns over one noun card and Student B turns over one verb card, (example: the parking lot screamed) and they explore the pairings and finish the lines. Student groups may keep as many lines and finishers as they want, shaping the lines into a single poem. Groups may write as many “non-card” lines as necessary for flow or framing. Revise for unity and surprise.
Exercise 2: Three Voices, One Moment
Students get in groups of three and choose a famous person: a musician, an athlete, an actor, a politician, or a social media influencer. It should be a celebrity that all three students know fairly well.
Students then choose one of the following moments in this person’s life:
When ____ was a little kid
When ____ was discovered
When ____ hit the big time (or didn’t hit the big time)
When ____sold out (or didn’t sell out)
When ____ learned something about themselves
Each student chooses a different perspective from which to tell this moment. Perspectives could be from a rival, a parent, a fan, a neighbor, an ex, their manager or roadies, etc.
Each student writes a ten or twelve line poem from their point of view about the selected moment.
Compare poems and determine what idea or theme the poems seem to be circling. Is it betrayal? Is it a loss? Is it the nature of fame?
Agree upon a single thematic or tonal “under current” in the poems, and combine all three sections into a coherent whole.
As a group, revise the poems with the universal theme in mind, revising for unity and sound.
Exercise 3: One Word, Two Meanings
Students pair up and choose a word whose meaning has changed recently, like “catfish,” “tag,” “fit,” “dope,” “fire,” etc. Student A gets the traditional definition of the word, example, catfish is a freshwater fish with whiskers; Student B gets the trending meaning of the word, catfish is when someone pretends to be someone they’re not on social media. Without defining the word, Student A writes first person lines of poetry around the traditional definition of the word; Student B writes first person lines of poetry around the trending meaning of the word. Compare lines and combine, alternating between the two meanings. What is this poem really about? Revise for unity and voice.