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New Media and the Teaching of Poetry in Higher Education

Using New Media to Teach Poetry in Higher Education.

The article that follows is designed to open up debate on how and where we use new media in the teaching of poetry in higher education. It is not intended to be exhausive, or indeed to deal with any one of the practices it looks at in great detail. Nor is it intended to look in any great detail at pedagogical theory related to how any of the new media may be used. This article is too short for any of that. It is intended to be one person’s thoughts on what they find productive in practice for teaching various elements of poetics within Creative Writing degrees over the course of the last few years. Some of it is the result of experimentation, some of it the result of observation. If it gives the reader a few ideas of their own that they can take forward into their next poetry class or seminar, then it will have done its job.

Not many years ago, the poetry workshop consisted of sitting in a circle and discussing poems presented by the participants on sheets of paper. Sometimes these poems were read aloud, sometimes not. The workshop leader asked each participant in turn to comment on the poem that had just been read and so it went round in a circle. In a two hour workshop, one might have a minute’s worth of critique on each poem from each participant and maybe two minutes from the workshop leader. The author of the poem would scribble furiously on their copy of the poem and spend the next week trying to make some sense of the comments and advice received. That was how we taught poetry. Not any more, thankfully.

Now you’re as likely to see poets plugging pen drives into USBs and importing the word version of their poem onto an interactive whiteboard, or failing that, e-mailing the poem to themselves and importing the attachment into some similar software where the poem can be put up for all to see. The interactive software can then be used to highlight, shade, underline and circle parts of the poem as each participant in turn gives their opinion of it. Each set of critical marks can then be removed so that each new speaker starts with a clean text. This is an approach I use with my students on a regular basis and they have found it very useful to be able to circle, cross out and underline a large copy of the poem under discussion as they critique it. The visual aspect helps the others in the group see how the poem is being critiqued, and can help the poet recieving the critique by saving the various critiqued versions so they have a record of what was discussed.

This is not just about being ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’. The various electronic versions can be saved and referred to by the student at a later date as they revise the poem. They are not reduced to scribbling furiously what has been said about various parts of their poem either, they are able to listen attentively to what is being said and construct a defence if necessary when it comes their time to speak. The pedagogical effects are many fold. Firstly each student is able to practice the writerly-critical skills they are being taught in a very active and deep way since they get to explain graphically and verbally what parts of the poem they feel are or are not working and why they feel this is so. Secondly, those students listening gain new isights into writerly-critical technique and craft from watching which tropes and devices cause which critical reactions. They also get to construct critical arguments agreeing or disagreeing with the previous speakers’ readings of the poem in question. Outside of that they get to practice a whole raft of transferreble skills such as how to engage in public debate in front of an audience and how to conduct themselves as they give their presentation so as to be clear and confident without being insulting or overbearing.

A further development of this process involves the use of wikis as a way of storing versions of the work which can be recalled and compared at a series of later dates. The opportunities this offers are that the drafting process in any poem can be conveniently analysed and critically commented upon and that this comparative analysis can itself become a useful tool for looking at the author’s creative processes in the making of the poem; and where a series of such drafts are available even whole collections. The wiki can act like a sort of writer’s diary where the writer can note why certain changes have been made, the effect they hope to achieve by making the change, and various other ancilliary comments related to the particular draft in question which can build up to quite a detailed and comprehensive resourse for modules in which they learn about the creative process form what other writers have written about it, or from various theoretical models of creativity which have been proposed. The student can then look in detail at their creative process using the raw material generated from these draft versions and analyse how it fits (or doesn’t) with the theories advanced or what other writers have written about the nature of the creative process. The more adventurous or able student may even be able to advance a theory of their own.

Given the prevalence of mobile phones and texting in the lives of our students, this technology can also be made use of. Text poems can be used to teach a variety of staples of good practice. The art of concentration on a single image can be taught using the haiku form for instance, but I have found that students really connect with it if they have to text it to their friend and then the friend responds with a text which can be a critique of the haiku perhaps with suggestions for improvement, it might say what they think worked about it and why or it might be a continuation or reply to it. Given that there is an upper limit to the number of characters one can use in a single text message this means that they are taught brevity and concentration in their critiques also. The same feature allows for a new ‘form’ of poem which some have already begun to exploit – the text poem. The poem must be complete in a set number of charatcers and must be inventive about how it handles the poetic tension of the line within that form. Again this also demonstrates to the students that poetry and form are always evolving and above all can be made relevant to and part of their daily lives.

An example of what an exercise like this might produce is the ‘tag-text’ poem below. Here, two lines of a poem by Po-Chü-I are used to generate the initial response by Andy which he texts to Ian. Ian replies with a response poem, which he sends to Andy, and so on. The only stipulation is that the poem must be able to be read on the mobile phone without scrolling.

Textual Tag Poetry by Ian M and Andy C.

Andy’s Source Line:

At my home there among the bamboo,
cicadas have sung again since I left.

Andy Wrote in Response:

Cicada’s songs fall deaf
on a darkened doorway.
Bamboo chimes clunk
hollow on a silent wind

Ian Wrote in Response:

It’s night time.
The door chime
stays unheard
except by birds
carried on breeze
past autumn trees.

Andy Wrote in Response:

Rested in the dark
tranquillity of sleep,
my mind betrays me
by thinking of you.

Ian Wrote in Response:

The mind is a ghetto
so I don’t go there alone;
I take you with me.
We face demons
and make better memories.
We are bullet-proof.

Students who engaged in this exercise commented that they enjoyed the immediacy of it and, while some admitted that they found it difficult to write direct responses to other people’s work, even they admitted that they quite liked the outcome and found that they wrote in a way that they would not otherwise have experimented with. It is worth noting that the reason the exchange is shaped as it is above is that Andy’s phone had four viewable lines per screen while Ian’s had six. Some admitted that they found such enforced economy constricting, others however liked the imposed structural limitations.

Computers too can be used to demonstrate the possibilities of new poetic forms which are made possible by recent technological advances. This includes the use of webpages to host the students’ poems and blogs to act as writers’ diaries but also includes much more adventurous ways in which poetry can be experimented with using hypertext. Poetry can become three dimensional, it can be made to move and dance around or across the page. Artistic effects such as montage and collage can be experimented with and set in motion. This is an incredibly fruitful new arena for poetic experimentation and one which proves exciting and interesting to students wanting to try new things with how poems work. This can sometimes lead to new ways of capturing the work for assessment being needed, but that problem can usually be overcome with a little imagination and a co-operative external examiner. One ex-student for instance presented a link to a web page as well as the drafts of his work and a commentary as an indpendent study. The project involved an experiment with motion in poetry which had various blocks of text move, scatter, scroll and interlock to produce new readings and new poems.

Perhaps one of the most important advances in new media in recent years is the ease with which it has become possible to make sound files and host them online or send them via e-mail etc. I say this because at base I believe poetry is an aural art. In every workshop I have ever taught I have always insisted that the poem under discussion is read out at least one and preferebly twice, once by the author and once by a different voice. This is essential for me, because I think the ear picks up a lot of information that the eye misses in the written version. Certain assonances etc. are difficult to spot visually, but they are immediate to the ear. The ear also picks up hesitations, trips, and bum notes within the music of the poem and can be an excellent detector of flaccid lines, flat diction and cliché.

This is, of course, problematic when teaching online. Now however, it is not impossible for students to send the tutor sound files by e-mail attachment, which can be circulated in an online workshop along with the text versions of the poems. I think this leads to a more complete experience of the poem and any critique received takes into account the aural qualities of the verse as well as its written representation, and I think that is crucial and has been one of the drawbacks to the online teaching of poetry in the past.

For students who take modules on ‘the business end of writing’ new technologies can be invaluable resources for giving students the skills necessary to promote and market themselves as writers. Most students have no difficulty in setting up websites on myspace or facebook and it is a short step from this to creating their own ‘writer page’ where they can upload some of their work, some sound files of their poems, maybe some pictures of them reading at open mics etc. It is a good way of getting them enthused about taking that crucial step into the public arena and creating for themselves a writerly persona online in preparation for the day when they will be regularly publishing in literary journals etc. Many of my students have facebook accounts and those that do join poetry groups and journal sites for the purposes of networking and publication opportunities.

There already exist quite a few online resources which are useful in the teaching of poetry. Some (like the website which hosts this article) provide an excellent resource for students who want to see and hear how other poets read their work. They also provide a resource where students can compare the aural and textual manifestations of the poem and consider what one gains or loses from having only one manifestation normally available. Such sites can offer a much richer experience of the poem by combining the aural and textual so the student can both hear and see the poem as it is read. Such sites often have interviews with poets talking about their work or interesting article which provide necessary and crucial background information which may be used for essays and critical discourse.

Sites also exist which act as repositories of historical and artistic information as well as places where text versions of poems may be conveniently accessed and these sites can be called up in seminars and workshops via the web to model the subject under discussion or to use as examples of poetic form or trope. Similarly sites such as 57 Productions can be accessed and the Poetry Jukebox played to a workshop group where the hard copy of the poem is under consideration. The effect is that the example becomes a living breathing one which is being reinforced through seeing the text of the poem and hearing the poem read at the same time. This can be a powerful aid to remembering the topic being discussed.

All of these tools can be used just as easily to liven up an ‘ordinary’ creative writing poetry workshop and give it an extra dimension as they can to make up for some of the shortcomings of teaching online or by distance learning, They cannot replace good old fashioned discussion and critical and writerly argument, but they can give it a new dimension and help sharpen its edge. I feel these technologies complement traditional methods and it is good for us as teachers to make use of all the technologies at our disposal (including paper and ink!) to give a blended and rounded approach to active learning and to hone not only the students skills in criticism and poetics, and an ability to think creatively and analytically, but also to give that student a whole raft of transferrable skills which a prospective employer (inside or outside the creative industries) is likely to find attractive when the student leaves and enters the workplace.

Dr Nigel McLoughlin
Principal Lecturer, Creative Writing,
University of Gloucestershire.

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New Media and the Teaching of Poetry in Higher Education

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