As usual, Ms. Peterson started off this cycle by addressing some housekeeping and she also touched upon the topic of parent-teacher conferences. She mentioned some tips that would assist us in a successful blog or if we were having difficulty blogging. Ms. Peterson indicated that we are free to look at previous blogs to get an idea of what to do if confused, and many of the requirements can be found on the Blogging Guide 2021. She also generously offered to help students if they had any questions about their grades or learning process. For PTC, she insisted that parents and students should discuss their concerns together first and have questions ready beforehand to ask her.
Link: https://docs.google.com/
Aim: How has poetic expression evolved in the 21st century?
Do Now: TEAM DISCUSSION
With your TEAMS discuss the following; Do you believe technology and the 21st century are ruining literature as we know it? Why or why not?
For this cycle’s Do Now, we were first led into our team breakout rooms to discuss the questions and then continued to share out as a class after. Various classmates were free to share and call upon each other to tackle this question and express their thoughts. All and all we basically agreed upon the fact that technology and the 21st century are not ruining literature, instead, it may even be beneficial to it. Many mentioned how technology allows for a widespread amount of information, literature, and inspiration to be accessed by a wide range of people easily. Technology also allows for more creativity and more exposure for young people about literature like poetry. A particular classmate has even mentioned that poems have attracted more attention because of social media as many see it as an aesthetic. In other words, those who were not interested in literature were able to find their passion for it thanks to technology and the 21st century.
Quickly after the discussion of the Do Now, we moved onto some spirit reading and a video provided by Ms. Peterson about Rupi Kaur. In the video, Jimmy Fallon and Rupi Kaur were talking about how Kaur had started her journey as a poet. She mentions a lot about her rough start and read a section named, Timeless, from her poetry collection, The Sun and Her Flowers. Kaur ended up self-publishing her own book after getting rejected several times. Her self-published and first book, milk and honey, managed to draw lots of attention and recognition. In her interview with Jimmy Fallon, she expressed how it was the best decision she has ever made despite her going through a midlife crisis at the time. Explaining how she was a broke college student, who spent most of her time designing, writing, and editing her book instead of focusing on school and studying. Everyone questioned her actions, doubting her decisions and choices. Fallon brought up how Sam Smith even got a tattoo of one of Kaur’s drawings from her poem. He then had Kaur share her poem, Timeless, and explained why she wrote it. People around her urged and insisted that she quickly write a second book just after publishing her previous one, reasoning that if she doesn't, she would get replaced easily, fearing that she would run out of time and people would forget about her. On the Tonight Show, Kaur explains to the audience that she wrote this poem to indicate that she is essentially “timeless” and has no “expiration date”.
Ms. Peterson also included four snippets from Kaur’s first publication, milk and honey, which was read through fairly clearly and quickly by students' spirit reading. Rupi Kaur reads through some of these poems in a short video linked below.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Continuing into the lesson, classmates read through some Instagram posts and Twitter tweets. Students also spirit read through lyrics written by Ariana Grande, Drake, and Lewis Capaldi. These are but not limited to places where we can find poetry. We may not notice it by poems and poetry is quite commonly used in the world. In other words, what Ms. Peterson wanted us to realize from reading through these lyrics, tweets, and posts is that poetry is all around us.
The lesson then continues onto epic poetry and micropoetry.
Vocabulary for this cycle:
Definition for Epic Poetry: A genre of classical poetry; a long narrative poem that is usually about heroic deeds and events that are significant to the culture of the poet.
Definition for Micropoetry: Micropoetry is a genre of poetic verse which is characterized by its extreme brevity. In other words, a micropoem is a short poem.
Essentially micropoetry means “a variety of different forms of short poetry” that has no rules that the writer has to abide by. A few examples of some micropoetry that have some sort of simple rule are haiku, tanka, senryu, and gogyohka. The majority of poems are short in length due to the word limit of social media platforms like Twitter. However, there is no designated limit to micropoems but there is an invisible line that is drawn between a regular lengthened poem and micropoems.
After the brief discussion about micropoetry and epic poetry, Ms. Peterson had for us a micropoem challenge. She basically asks us to create a poem using the word pool we made for homework as inspiration with 1 of the 2 options. Our first option was to make a poem on Twitter-length, with only 280 characters or 140 characters (challenge mode). Our other option was to create a poem in an Instagram-like format, where the design had to be short, concise, and relatable. The challenge mode for this option was to make it aesthetically pleasing as many people do in an Instagram post. If we did choose to go with the second option, we also had to write a poem about either of these topics, #highschool, #freshmenyear, and #teenagelife. Following the next couple of minutes of individually working on a micropoem, many students shared theirs with the class.
Then we moved onto spirit reading an article written by John Maher on Feb 2nd, 2018. The article was called, Can Instagram Make Poems Sell Again?, students alternated with the reading and we quickly finished the article. The article included a lot about people’s opinions on Rupi Kaur and her published books. The author of the article mentioned arguments for both positive and negative viewpoints from people about the Canadian poet. Some found her work to be amateur and simply just a trend and nothing more. While others argue that because of her work, the sales of poems have definitely improved and it allowed for more people to feel passionate about poetry. Finally, we were asked to work collaboratively with our group after class to finish the 3 questions that were below the reading.
The instructions and three questions are:
TEAMWORK: Work together with your teams to complete the following questions. Remember to provide “textual evidence” for each of your responses!
According to the article, what is at least one criticism of Rupi Kaur’s contribution to the world of poetry?
Cite evidence in order to show how John Maher argues for the literary value of what he calls the “Rupi Effect”.
Based on your own personal opinion and the contents of the article, explain the rise of popularity of poetry on social media platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram) these past few years.
Our homework was to finish the 3 Teamwork Questions above along with anything else we did not finish during class that was asked from the document and submit it through Google Classroom by November 16, 2020 10 pm.
Reflection:
Through this lesson, I managed to learn a lot about Rupi Kaur and poetry. I learned that poetry was all around us and most likely part of our daily lives but we just don’t realize it. The interview between Jimmy Fallon and Rupi Kaur on the Tonight Show allowed me to learn and realize that working hard towards something and never giving up, despite the difficulties, will bring big rewards. Just like how Kaur had explained, even though she had no support from those around her when she first started, no money, and a college student who was not paying much attention to her upcoming exams, she was still able to pull through and publish her book. This book and her dedication was the reason why she is well known today and why she is so successful. During today's lesson, I also learned the differences and uniqueness of micropoetry and epic poetry. Ms. Peterson gave us the chance to even write our own micropoems that allowed me to express my personal feelings and thoughts about highschool. The reason why I think we should all look more into poems is that it allows us to express ourselves through a form of literature just like how I did when writing my micopoem. In my opinion, poems allow us to explore more of ourselves and our creativity that we don’t normally notice. As a person who was not fond of poetry before this lesson, I think after obtaining so much knowledge about it, I realized that poems are very easy to write but also incredibly important. I should use the knowledge that I gained from this cycle’s lesson to explore more about myself.
According to the article, what is at least one criticism of Rupi Kaur’s contribution to the world of poetry?
Cite evidence in order to show how John Maher argues for the literary value of what he calls the “Rupi Effect”.
Based on your own personal opinion and the contents of the article, explain the rise of popularity of poetry on social media platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram) these past few years.
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