BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – A class at Illinois Wesleyan University recently pulled poetry off the page and placed it into the community.
One of the May Term sections of Introductory to Creative Writing challenged students to not only write poetry and fiction, but to come up with ways of sharing it in the community.
“In the class, we talk a lot about why creative writing is important, and why it is out there. I wanted the students to have the chance to see more than just their own responses to the work,” said Brandi Reissenweber, an adjunct faculty member who was the instructor of the four-week class. May Term is a time when students can take intensive classes within the compressed time period, as opposed to the usual 16-week semester.
The project, called Act of Art, required students to write several works individually, then come together in groups to decide what pieces should be presented to the public, and how their work should be disseminated, said Reissenweber.
Several ideas came to fruition – including plastering a car with poetry and fiction and parking it in various spots around town; and holding a lemonade stand on the Constitution Trail with poetry pasted to the cups. “We thought that a lemonade stand would be a good idea since it was a hot month of May,” said Elise Anderson, a sophomore from Wheaton, Ill. She and fellow student Nicole Taylor led a group of students who wrote poetry in chalk to draw people to the stand, and then gave out lemonade with their poetic creations attached to the cups. “Most people who approached us seemed very interested in our project. They liked to ask questions. Some people even saved the poems that were on the cups.”
Taylor, a sophomore from Lake Zurich, Illinois, remembered one man who came up to to the table after he had his lemonade. “He walked past us after throwing away his cup and held out the part of my poem that was taped on his cup and he said, ‘I am going to pin this on my wall. This is a really good thing you guys are doing,’” said Taylor, who is a biology major. “We all thought that it was really special how he was impacted by our work and appreciated what we were doing.”