Workshop 8: Collective poem (assembling or disassembling)
In this activity, the students work together to write a poem using prepared words. The words for the collective poem could already be prepared on cue cards that the students can assemble based on a given theme that is relevant to the class. Alternately, students can work on an erasure poem, creating a new poem from a pre-existing text. This activity is great for teamwork and allowing for out-of-the-box thinking about how to assemble thoughts and ideas.
Examples:
1. Inspired by the Dada artists of the early 1900s, who were interested in chance and spontaneity, this activity involves working on a poem in a group. The initial inspiration comes from this explanatory text:
- Take a newspaper.
- Take some scissors.
- Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
- Cut out the article.
- Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
- Shake gently.
- Next take out each cutting one after the other.
- Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
- The poem will resemble you.
- And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Tristan Tzara, How to Make a Dada poem, 1920
2. This collective poem can be a bit more intentional!
- Using cue cards with words already written (prepared in advance), students work together to create a poem based on a theme that will be studied in class
3. Another approach to the collective poem could be to create an erasure poem. This involves working with a pre-existing text.
- Students obscure large portions of the text, keeping selected words visible to create an entirely new poem
- Kate Hall’s students’ work examples.
4. Entopic Graphomania
- Yet another approach to a collective poem is a variation on the Entopic Graphomania, as experimented by Natalie Olanick
- The students are given a text or shown a video about a particular topic
- They are asked to write down key words that struck them in their reading or viewing on a large piece of paper
- Then, they make links between the words that they have written down, in whatever way they see fit.
- This could be an individual or group project
- See images from Natalie’s “Introduction to Studio Arts” class below for details:
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