Breaking the Rules: a Poetry Workshop

This course will become read-only in the near future. Tell us at community.p2pu.org if that is a problem.

Task Navigation 

Start of Course: Rules of Thumb

 

Welcome to “Breaking the Rules: A Poetry Workshop.”  I’m so amped for this course!  We’ll get down to brass tacks shortly, but first some points of order about how we’ll work, conduct in the course and licensing. Without further ado...

How we’ll work.  We’ll post everything in the space allotted to each task by Sunday of each week. Usually, folks can post 1/week more than they can make a weekly meeting.  So our calendar will be:

Week 1: Rules of thumb 7/19/2011-7/30/2011
Week 2: Introductions 8/1/2011-8/7/2011
Week 3: Abstract v. Concrete 8/8/2011-8/21/2011
Week 4: Intentions 8/22/2011-8/28/2011
Week 5: Voice & Tone 8/29/2011-9/4/2011
Week 6: The Mark: Climax and Resolution 9/5/2011-9/11/2011

Code of conduct. Successful P2PU courses rely on several elements.  I wanted to provide some hints, tips and recommendations on how to have a good experience in the course.
1.) Be gentle.  P2PU is all about discussing and diverging.  But always be polite.
2.) Make your voice heard. Share it with the group if you have suggested improvements.  For every week, please feel free to add more example poems if you know a better example.  These tasks are open to collaboration, so jump in.
3.) Participate each week. That means posting your version of the poem, commenting on another peer’s piece, and augmenting the conversation with links to other poems, etc.
4.) P2PU is both informal and serious.  Activities are proposed here--post them whenever you like during the week, but be committed to it.
5.) Have fun! Writer’s block sucks. This course is meant to jolt those creative juices into flowing.  And working together can be way more useful than toiling away at a blank page.

Licensing.
The license for all of P2PU is Creative Commons Share Alike.  This writing space is public, and archived after completion. This piece is vital to future learners and a sustainable P2PU!

Also, we welcome sharing the work of other poets if we can locate it freely around the web (in accordance with Code for Best Practices for Fair Use in Poetry). There’s a lot out there, especially at the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and in online magazines and blogs.  There’s tons out there for us to share and talk about!

Let’s get going!  I’ll post Task 2 for those who are eager to get started.

Task Discussion


  • Vanessa Gennarelli   Aug. 1, 2011, 7:42 a.m.

    HTML can be quite cruel to line breaks.  For sharing our own poems, participants might want to use googledocs to link out to the document.  If you're satisfied with the line breaks directly in the column forum, you may choose to paste it directly into the post.  Either way is fine.

    Let's get started!

  • Muhammad Shahbaz   July 26, 2011, 8:53 a.m.

    Well... I think its a nice pland to start with August... People will find time to set up their time and ideas.. i am ready though... any task would be okay... even right now...

  • Keith Parker   July 24, 2011, 11:46 a.m.

    Hello Vanessa and others

    Glad to be member and part of this experimental learning forum. I am very interested in the whole concept of on line learning. I have two current facebook sites one devoted to Art Criticism and a newly formed one devoted to Poetry Appreciation called Poetry Talk. I also have a site not active now which was devoted to philosophy and used to be linked to a virtual world called `Second Life`. I`m looking forward to seeing how this site works and of course doing some poetry with you all.

  • Vanessa Gennarelli   July 24, 2011, 12:58 p.m.
    In Reply To:   Keith Parker   July 24, 2011, 11:46 a.m.

    Welcome Keith! Vanessa

  • AJC   July 21, 2011, 2:50 p.m.

    Hey All!

    I'm excited ot get going on this! I'm looking at the course dates and wondering if we're ready to start or want to push back a week?

  • Vanessa Gennarelli   July 21, 2011, 2:53 p.m.
    In Reply To:   AJC   July 21, 2011, 2:50 p.m.

    Hey Alison!  My thinking was that as people signed up, they could absorb the rules of thumb at their own pace (soft start), and then the first week of August we'd start with Introductions (hard start).  Does that work for you?  How does everyone else feel about that? 

  • Erica   July 21, 2011, 3 p.m.
    In Reply To:   Vanessa Gennarelli   July 21, 2011, 2:53 p.m.

    I was just wondering the same thing! Sounds good to me, Vanessa.

  • AJC   July 21, 2011, 3:25 p.m.
    In Reply To:   Vanessa Gennarelli   July 21, 2011, 2:53 p.m.

    Sounds perfect!

  • Maribeth   July 21, 2011, 5:32 p.m.
    In Reply To:   Vanessa Gennarelli   July 21, 2011, 2:53 p.m.

    Good plan!  See you all for Introductions!