Student Poets: Collage Poetry
Collage Poetry showcases visual poems created by students enrolled in the spring 2023 courses Introduction to Creative Writing and Pop Culture Poetics under the guidance of Dr. Chrissy Martin, Assistant Professor of English. Art books and magazines to roadmaps, sheet music, postcards, stamps, comic books, and other thrifted treasures are juxtaposed, allowing the poets to disassemble and reassemble artistic elements into new, thought-provoking works. We spoke to Dr. Martin about her courses and this assignment.
As the Assistant Professor of English guiding students in the Introduction to Creative Writing and Pop Culture Poetics courses, what inspired you to incorporate collage poetry into the curriculum?
We created these collage poems on the very last day of class. When I designed these syllabi, I left the last day unplanned so I could create an activity that responded to the direction of our course discussions and the interests of those specific students. Also, students are exhausted by the last week of class, so I wanted an engaging and tactile activity; I find that hands-on activities create excitement and energy difficult to muster right before finals week.
We continually discussed juxtaposition that semester–especially in Pop Culture Poetics because the course topic put together poetry (often considered highbrow) and pop culture (often considered lowbrow). Students spent the semester studying and writing about others’ surprising amalgamations, so I wanted to give them a chance to make their own.
I went to various antique, thrift, and used bookstores and found art books, magazines, roadmaps, sheet music, postcards, antique stamps, and comic books. I bought decorations such as rhinestones, disco tiles, pressed flowers, and dried fruit. The students responded so positively to this activity that I have already done a smaller collage poetry activity for Red River Poetry Society.
Collage poetry involves weaving together disparate textual fragments to create new narratives. How do you approach teaching students to navigate this process effectively while encouraging creativity and experimentation?
Since this was not a major assignment, I felt less pressure to guide students through this activity and was able to give them more creative freedom. I set up this activity by giving background on collage poetry, introducing the “found poem” (a poem made of found materials), and providing a brief historical background on other types of found art (such as the cento, dadaism, pop art, and blackout poetry). My goal was to show them the range of possibilities in collage work so that they might borrow techniques and feel inspired to create their own techniques.
In the classroom, I always aim to make clear to students the goals of each assignment––what it is they are learning. For this assignment, I gave them the following informal list of learning objectives:
● How to focus on language skills at the line level
● Associative thinking and making connections among texts
● The importance of context, arrangement, and form in writing--including space on the page, line breaks, stanza breaks--anything!
● Using juxtaposition--opposites, parallels, similarities'--putting things beside one another can change the meaning of each.
● How art can be disassembled and reassembled to create new works of art
With the learning goals and knowledge of found art as a genre, the students were able to create any work that fit into these goals. In 100- and 200-level creative writing courses, I am less concerned with the excellence of the product (the poem) and more interested in the process of creation through which students learn about possibilities in poetry and their own artistic capabilities.
Associative thinking is highlighted as a guiding principle in the creation of collage poetry. How do you define associative thinking? How do you foster an environment where students feel empowered to explore associative connections among texts and images?
Associative thinking is making connections between disparate things. In my class, it might be connections between poems or connections between poems and other texts, art, or media. I build my entire class–and many of my classes–around associative thinking and making (often unexpected) connections.
Bill Collins says, “To write a poem is to become part of a Great Conversation. . . . This talk among poets runs continuously back and forth through history, poets from all ages speaking at once in some great parlor of synchronicity.” Since all art is part of the same “Great Conversation,” I invite students to bring into our class discussion other poems, texts, visual art, movies, songs, etc. that are in conversation with our texts.
For example, in Introduction to Creative Writing this semester, a student pointed out that the poem “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” by Franny Choi has the same conceit as the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel. So, we listened studied the song alongside the poem, and thought about the implications of the same message being expressed decades apart. In the same class session, I brought in the poem “We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky to consider alongside Franny Choi’s text. I model associative thinking and encourage my students to do so in order to understand poetic texts and concepts more deeply–and also, to understand that poetry includes play!
The exhibition showcases the work of students from Introduction to Creative Writing and Pop Culture Poetics courses. Can you discuss any differences in approach or outcomes between these two courses, and how they complement each other in the study of collage poetry?
Introduction to Creative Writing is a creative writing workshop where we read published fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and workshop (or critique) one another’s creative writing. Pop Culture Poetics is a literature class where we study published literature. One class is about creating writing and one is about studying writing. However, even in a literature class, it is important to me that students think about what it takes to create the literature they are studying. It may be uncommon, but I make my literature students write at least one poem in these courses. If they are going to study poetry, they need to “get under the hood” and figure out what it takes for the authors to create the work they are studying.
So, Intro to Creative Writing was using this exercise to consider how to create juxtapositions and associations in their own writing, whereas Pop Culture Poetics was doing this exercise to consider how they might analyze these actions in the writing of others. However, these skills are transferable: students can use them to either write or study a text–and also, to make connections in other courses and fields.
Collage Poetry is on display at the Meadows Museum from March 12 - April 20, 2024.