Creating a Literary Magazine - Part Two
Poetry can provide a great way to get a literary magazine going at your school.
By Amy Wilding
As part of my journey to create a first-ever literary magazine at my school, I assembled a staff and helped them devise a title, determine a layout and construct a submission process. But all this would be meaningless if there aren’t any poems for submission. My next challenge was to transform my reluctant writers into expressive, creative ones. In my first article about this adventure, I outlined a few types of poetry that I thought would be easy for me to teach and students to write - acrostic, haiku, and diamante, songwriting and caption writing. However, before I could even think about putting any poem into the magazine, I had to overcome one major hurdle — student fear.
On the first day of any creative writing class, I immediately throw the students into poetry. I do this not to intimidate them, but to illustrate that poetry is not something to despise, but to embrace. I show them that poems don’t always have to rhyme and they don’t always reflect “deep issues” and thoughts. We do this by writing one of my favorites — acrostic poems. I explain that each letter of their name becomes the first letter of a word that describes them. I love this activity because not only does it give me an idea of students' writing abilities, it also gives the students their first taste of success in writing poetry.
Whenever I teach anything creative, I make the experience fun and safe; students need to feel that no matter what they share, they won't be harshly criticized. In order to set the proper tone, we begin with simple descriptive writing exercises. For example, I write a variety of words on index cards. I start with nouns and verbs. Each student uses the cards to create a sentence. The goal is to get students thinking creatively. One sentence might be “The beach ball scurried down the cobblestone road.” Once I've helped students see that writing shouldn't be painful, I introduce more challenging types of activities.
A good place to start students on their journey to create poetry would be by having them read popular poems and dissect them. You might want to create a list of the characteristics of each kind and find commonalities. Then, you can discuss the types of poetry students will be producing — haikus and diamantes.
Haikus and diamante poems are unique types of poetry. Haikus are very short and can be about anything. Diamantes are visually appealing and there are no beat requirements. Before I have students work on haikus, I show them several examples. I spend a lot of time helping them understand the 5-7-5 beat format. In order to allay any anxiety, we return to our index cards. As a group, we select a card and then write a haiku on that subject. Then I have students do the same in pairs, and, eventually, individually. I follow the same process for diamante poems.
When having students write diamante poems you should print out a list of instructions for students to refer to. I spend quite a bit of time reviewing the grammatical requirements; each line must have a predetermined number of nouns, adjectives or gerunds. The first step when having students write a diamante poem is to create a list of contrasting topics. Some possibilities might be “love and hate,” “slow and fast,” or “peace and war.” Students should try to find specific examples of the topic he or she chooses. For example, I have a student who created a diamante of “Sponge Bob and Sandy.” Students should choose a topic they can relate to.
The last two types of poetry I cover are songwriting and captions. I chose songwriting namely because of my student population. Many of my students are pursuing musical careers. During their free time, I often hear them rapping in the hallway or outside of school. I thought this genre would fit well with their interests. It’s also the perfect time for me to step out of “teacher” mode and allow them to teach me. In order to help those students who don’t write songs, we approach it by describing them as stories. We listen to some examples and create a list of elements. One thing that really helped me is to come up with minimum requirements of two verses and a refrain. For those who have a lot of passion for songwriting, I let them be as creative as they wish.
Finally, I use captioning. I am lucky enough to be working with a photography class. As the photography students finalize their pictures, my students analyze the picture and construct a caption or other form of poetry. In preparation, we look at several famous pictures and the corresponding caption. Like with the other processes, once I believe that they can handle working alone, I let them write individually.
Prior to putting any student work in to the literary magazine, we spend a few class periods sharing the work and providing positive and negative critiques. I let the students choose what they would like to submit based on their own criteria. Once they make their choice, we begin revising. Eventually, it will be included in the magazine. Here are some activities that you can try in your classroom to create your own literary magazine.
Creating A Literary Magazine:
This lesson is great for first time haiku writers. Be sure you have some old magazines around to use for your activities.
This lesson shows students how music is poetry. It is a great introduction for songwriting or any other poetic form.
This lesson focuses on haiku poems using art as inspiration. If you want your students to immerse themselves in poetry, this is a great idea. It can be adapted for almost any classroom.
This lesson incorporates music with poetry. Students first identify what makes a poem a song and vice versa. Then they move to independent learning.
