Every Friday, the Kent State community can come together to create poetry and share a more vulnerable side of themselves at the Wick Poetry Center. The Wick Weekly poetry writing workshop brings the campus members together to help them develop as poets and create a community of creatives.
During the workshops, student workers lead a group of poets through the Wick writing model.
Dorisha Hendrix, a senior English major who has worked at the center for three years, said the Wick writing model has five steps with the intent to make the poets feel more comfortable sharing: reading poetry together, analyzing poems as a group, group writing, individual writing and sharing.
“There’s something about bringing that togetherness that really helps a lot of people and makes them comfortable,” Hendrix said. “You can see the poem written one way by the poet but then you see that it's so accessible to you that you could do something just like it as a group. It makes it easier to then go into individual writing.”
The most recent workshop focused on lyric poems. “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You” by poet Natalie Diaz, a lyric poem based on the song “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s was the example that they used. The group watched the music video of “Maps,” then watched a video of Diaz performing her poem. The videos led to a discussion about the use of words and acceptance.
After the exercise, each poet wrote their own poem. One student wrote a poem using the lyrics from the Jason Mraz song “I’m Yours.”
“My poem was a mix of my own journey of how to love myself, and stand up for myself and be an advocate for myself, through the evolution of his song,” Elaina Letso, an integrated social studies sophomore, said. “Using different parts of his lyrics that really spoke to me as a kid as stepping stones for how I felt I've actually grown to love myself.”
Every week the workshop helps poets learn and grow in the craft that they love. To be a part of this community go to the Wick Poetry Center at 1 p.m. any Friday classes are in session.
Learn more about the Wick Poetry Center, visit www.kent.edu/wick.