Poetry, Pedagogy, Popular Culture
A few announcements about what's next and what's now at PopPoetry
Some Housekeeping
As many of you faithful readers know, I’m expecting my first child. My due date is this Friday, and I’ll be working and writing a bit differently for the next few months.
It’s my aim to keep offering main posts on Wednesdays, link roundups on Fridays, and monthly writing prompts on the last Monday of the month. I may pop in to post something myself, or you may be receiving articles written by a host of talented guest posters I’ve got lined up! Life may get in the way, quite literally, but rest assured that PopPoetry isn’t going anywhere. Or rather, it’s going to some exciting new places!
More News!
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be sharing my expertise on poetry, pop culture, and pedagogy on a panel at next year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference:
I’ve learned so much and come into contact with so many talented and knowledgeable folks in the pop culture space since I began writing this Substack, and I’m honored to have been given this space to bring together three other dynamite poet-educators to talk about the intersection of poetry and popular culture and how it can be harnessed as a teaching tool.
If you’re planning to join the conference either in person or virtually in 2023, I’d love for you to attend the panel and say hello!
Poetry, Pop Culture, Pedagogy
I hope that PopPoetry is entertaining while also working to alter our conceptions of what poetry can do and who poets are. In other words, I hope it’s educational. As a former university professor who works and teaches in an arts nonprofit setting, creative writing pedagogy is a subject that’s close to my heart.
How young writers are born is much less clear than, say, the processes that help to create young musicians or dancers. Creative writing instruction is far less codified and takes up less of the regular school year than music or visual art programs, and extracurricular creative writing programs for young people are much rarer than other kinds of arts programming.
What’s more, creative writing is often taught by non-specialists, relegated to a single week or unit in an English class, underfunded… the list goes on. How do I know? I’ve been both a student and a teacher in the discipline, and I continue to engage with communities of teachers online. And I’ve become something of a collector of requests for creative writing lesson plans and pedagogical approaches.
Sharing pedagogical tips can be a key part of teaching in community, but there’s something about posts like these that moves me to action. We need more and better creative writing instruction, and that instruction needs to be less hierarchical, less patriarchal, less white, and less reliant on the Western canon. We also need to stop foisting the instruction of this art form on instructors who are under-prepared to teach it (a problem in education more broadly, as teachers are asked to take on more and more duties under conditions that just get worse over time).
I think popular culture can play an important role in creating equitable poetry workshops, and I’m really looking forward to sharing these findings at AWP.
Talk Back
If you write, how did you come to it? Did you have influential teachers? How did you start? Did you arrive through interactions with music, depictions of writers in the media, another route? Share your story in the comments.
Hey there, I had my daughter Sept 3rd last year and can't believe she will be a year old soon. Having a child gives you less time to write, but it changes how you think, what you write (not just about your baby), and opens you to a new way of thinking. Motherhood has taught me to ask for help, and to push myself to make time to write. Congrats on this new excitement in your life and wish you and your soon to be baby well!