POETRY WORKSHOP: PERSONA POEMS Voice to VoiceMarch 7, 2015

Co-Leaders:Bria Cole

Nicole CountsLia Greenwell

Craft Talk Author:Rachel Eliza Griffiths

10:00 – 10:15am Sign-in & Welcome

10:15 – 10:30am Opening Lines: Different Personas

10:30 – 11:15am Craft Talk: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

11:15 – 11:35am Share & Discovery: First Impressions

11:35 – 11:40am Community Announcements, Part I

11:40am – 12:55pm Break

11:55 – 12:05pm Community Announcements, Part II

12:05 – 12:35pm Freewrite: Compelled to Speak

12:35 – 12:55pm Group Reimagining: Unfinished Business

12:55 – 1:30pm Closing Lines: Open Mic

GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

OPENING LINES: Different Personas

Part 1. Use the following prompts to start brainstorming characters (real or imaginary) you might use as inspiration for your poem.

1. Someone you admire:

2. Someone you have never met:

3. Someone who disgusts you:

4. Someone of whom you are jealous:

5. Someone you saw on the subway or bus:

6. Someone you used to know:

7. Someone who is adventurous:

8. Someone in your immediate family or friend circle:

9. A historical figure:

10. Wildcard! Anyone else who comes to mind:

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

Part 2.Pick one of the people you listed in Part 1 and start to think more deeply about his or her character.

Your character: ______________________________

What is the “essence” of this person’s character?

1. If your character were an animal, s/he would be a ___________________.

2. If your character were a color, s/he would be ________________________.

3. If your character were a month, s/he would be ________________________.

4. If your character were a mode of transportation, s/he would be a

_________.

5. If your character were a musical instrument, s/he would be a

____________.

6. If your character were a vegetable, s/he would be a ____________________.

7. If your character were an article of clothing, s/he would be a

_____________.

8. If your character were a tree, s/he would be a ________________________.

9. If your character were a planet, s/he would be  ________________________.

10. If your character were a type of weather, s/he would be

_________________.

11. If your character were a texture, s/he would be

_______________________.

12. If your character were a historical period, s/he would be

________________.

13. If your character were a body part, s/he would be a

___________________.

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

14. If your character were a disease, s/he would be

_______________________.

15. If your character were a body of water, s/he would be a

______________.

16. Wildcard! If your character were a _____________, s/he would be (a)

____________.

CRAFT TALK: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. She is the recipient of fellowships including the Cave Canem Foundation, Millay Colony, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her visual and literary work has appeared widely. Griffiths is the creator and director of P.O.P (Poets on Poetry), a video series of contemporary poets featured by the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection of poetry, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose), was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn.

Write a question for the author below.

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

SHARE & DISCOVERY: First Impressions

Help your partner fill in the details of her character’s life by interviewing her as that character. Below is a bank of questions to get you started, but feel free to add your own as the character starts to take shape. Take notes for your partner on her packet while you are interviewing her that she can refer to later.

1. Where were you born?

2. Where do you live now? Why?

3. Who do you love?

4. Who loves you?

5. What motivates you?

6. What is your biggest dream?

7. What is the last book you read?

8. What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?

9. What did you eat for breakfast?

10. What do you always carry around with you?

11. What do you see outside your window?

12. What is the last thing you do every night before bed?

13. What is your biggest regret?

14. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

15. What would your perfect day be like?

16. What do you look for in a friend?

17. What’s your favorite memory?

18. What are you most afraid of?

19. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and

why?

20. What is missing from your life?

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

FREEWRITE: Compelled to Speak

Write a poem from your character’s point of view. Put this person in a situation where s/he is compelled to speak, for whatever reason. Consider what event has compelled this character to speak, as well as to whom s/he might be speaking.

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

GROUP REIMAGINING: Unfinished Business

Break into small groups of four, and take some time to share your poems. After each poem, the other group members should think about what remains unanswered in the poem—what questions linger about this character and her situation? What did you want to hear more about?

Write a question that you have about the poem on a notecard. Talk about your questions. When you’re done, give the poet the notecard.

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

CLOSING LINES: Open Mic

Return to your poem. Choose one of the questions you received from your group and write a few more lines, another stanza, an addendum, or an entirely new poem answering the question.

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

APPENDIX: Exercises and Resources

Exercises For Pair Sessions

1. Choose a photograph. Write a poem from the perspective of a character in the it. Be sure to use details in the photograph as images in the poem. Focus on creating a distinctive and consistent voice.

2. A Ritual Poem takes a ritual (real or imagined) and brings a sense of meaning and reflection to the ritual it describes. Create a ritual poem using the steps below:

1. Pick a celebrity, a historical person, or someone that you know2. Pick an element of her life that has or deserves a ritual3. Decide the result you would want the ritual to produce4. Think of the actions you would take to achieve the result5. Write the poem

3. Think of someone you are really mad or upset with that truly owes you an apology. Write a poem in her perspective; give yourself the sorry that you deserve.

4. Write a poem as if it were an entry in someone’s journal or diary or even her Twitter account. If you want an added challenge, limit your stanzas to 140 characters so they mirror the limitations of Twitter.

Recommended Reading

Writing Personal Poetry, Sheila BenderA Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, Stacey Lynn BrownAll of Us: Collected Poems, Raymond CarverAutobiography of Eve, Ansel ElkinsKettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam FisherThe Wild Iris, Louise GluckNot Me, Eileen MylesThe Poetics of Disobedience, Alice NotleyLunch Poems, Frank O’HaraMirror, Sylvia PlathCitizen, Claudia Rankine

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GWN Poetry Workshop: Persona Poems, 2015

APPENDIX: Poetry Terms

Allegory: Where every aspect of a story is representative, usually symbolic, of something else, usually a larger abstract concept or important historical/geopolitical event.

Alliteration: The repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to a poem’s meter, are emphasized.

Anaphora: The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines.

Blank Verse: A poem with no rhyme but does have iambic pentameter. This means it consists of lines of five feet, each foot being iambic, meaning two syllables long, one stressed followed by an unstressed.

Dramatic Monologue: a form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.

Enjambment: The end of one line pushes ahead to the next line without using a punctuation mark. The effect usually suspends the meaning of the first line, so that the meaning of the first line becomes dependent on whatever follows it in the next line.

Meter: The regular linguistic sound patterns of a verse.

Persona: A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem.

Syntax: The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences.

Tone: The apparent emotional state, or “attitude,” of the speaker/narrator/narrative voice, as conveyed through the language of the piece. Tone refers only to the narrative voice; not to the author or characters. It must be described or identified in order to be analyzed properly; it would be incorrect to simply state, “The author uses tone.”

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