I teach a lot of poetry workshops; this summer I’m teaching one at Harvard Summer School. Today was the first day of class and students developed ideas and assignments for their first poems. On Wednesday, we’ll discuss those poems and have our first workshop.
This means it’s time to talk to the students about how to comment on their classmates’ poems. I want this conversation to give the first workshop a useful structure and I want the students to take away a model for how to comment on classmates’ poems outside of workshop.
I do this differently every semester — different groups of students have different levels of comfort and anxiety with one another. This group seems particularly thoughtful and charming. But invariably someone will worry that they aren’t qualified to comment on someone else’s poem, so I like to start with the basics. I’m going to give my students this handout on Wednesday:
9 Things to Consider When You Comment on a Classmate’s Poem: A Checklist
(click here for a PDF version of the checklist!)
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