Alexa Mergen : Poetry Workshop

    ________I was so proud to see you all taking risks in sharing your original work with the class during the poetry workshop that Alexa Mergen presented. Let's take time to reflect upon what we learned. In the comments at this posting, write a message to Alexa that addresses the following questions:

What was your experience? What specific things did you learn about yourself and the process of writing and performing poetry? What exercises were helpful to you?

Comments

[PurPly_PunK]

May 7th, 2007

Dear Alexa,

Thank you so much for coming on your own time to teach us. You taught me how to become a poet. I leaned so much form your workshop. Especially the exercise about different views when one has different emotions. That exercise gave me ideas for my poetry portfolio. Before, writing poetry was not fun for me, it was merely an assignment that I had to complete. Now, I enjoy it more and like to do it on my spare time. I really like the poems that you brought in for us. It encouraged me to look for more poetry to read and not just Mother Goose rhymes.
Once again, I would like to thank you. I can’t express in writing about how much I appreciate your patience with us. You changed my view about writing poetry. You’re the Best~!!!

Sincerely,
Melinda

[miniart168]

Dear, Ms. Alexa,
Hi, this is a student who wrote "tunnel with no light", remember? I'm Ye Seul.
It was a pleasure to meet you and wanted to appreciate for giving us a great lecture on how to write good poems, how to connect poem to the real world and mostly how to open our mind when looking at things in a new way.
Actually I'm an artist and usually artists also do look at things differently and try to view the objects from different perspective. But through your teachings of looking at the world, I got another way of looking at the objects. For example, I thought the stone was something that is solid and dull but it can be seen as an object that has simple and comfortable life. (makes me want a life of a stone! ^ ^;;) Anyway, Thanks!
When you made us to think about what each line meant (generally), that helped me to understand the meaning of the poem more easily. Also, when you kept telling us to 'relax', I had no burden or pressure to write a line from my head but realized that I was rather comfortable writing it. I really learned a lot as you can see and hope you come again to B*rma! See you!!
Sincerely, "TUNNEL"

[fatandconfused]

Hello Ms. Alexa
Thank you very much for taking time to come and teach us how to write and improve our poetry! The methods that you taught us were extremely helpful to me while I was writing poetry for our poetry portfolio. I liked especially liked taking sentences and cutting them apart to change the meaning of the sentence. I also enjoyed and found helpful the activity in which we wrote different poems with different emotions about a barn.
Poetry is actually easier to write and more enjoyable now and I think that I might write more poetry in the future outside of the class.
Thanking you once again
Calvin
(the big bald one)

[Slayer 19]

Dear Ms.Alexa,

Thank you for coming over to our class to teach us about poetry in more depth. Poetry to me before this was a ambiguous branch of literature. But when we did all of the activities, where we looked at the same 'barn' with different emotions, and said our lines as we walked in circles, I saw a whole new other world unfold in front of me. And me an admirer of this landscape got sucked in to it and found myself part of it. I felt that I could indeed be a poet and publish my perspectives out there where everyone is. There are no words to say how thankful I am and I wish that you could come again (although it is humid and hot here). I hoped you liked being here because I personally had such a great experience. An experience that I shall never forget throughout my life.
Thank you once again for coming

Sincerely, Sion

(the only guy that was late to class)

[DieAloneXplosiv3]

Alexa Mergen, thanks you very much for coming here and explain what poetry actually is. You have told all of us something about poetry but this something means a great thing to all of us. You have taught us how to write a poem, feel a poem, see a poem and make a poem o0ut of a prose and so more other things. All these things you have taught will be kept in out head and will not forget them till the end of our life. I personally think the way you teach students is really good, you first gain their attention to you, then you start teaching them unnoticeably which I think is a very good technique. Within the two days you came to out class, I really have learnt a lot from it. Thank you very much for everything you have done. Thanks you very much, thank you!

[Ball4Life]

Dear Ms.Alexa,
Thank you for coming to our school and giving us poetry lessons while you were here in Yangon. Honestly, I had fun and learned alot about poetry from you. Learning how to write with different emotions, from different perspectives, learning how to write a good poem from a single sentence, learning how things are related to one another, and noticing things to write good poems. Your lessons added a whole lot of new things to my knowledge of poetry.
I enjoyed the way you teach too. The activities and exercises were fun and i learned alot about writing poems from doing them.
Again, Thank you very much for helping us become better poets.

Alex

[white_love13]

Dear Ms. Alexa,
Thank you soooooooooo much for sparing us some of your precious time to talk about the wondrous elements of poetry. To be honest, I wasn't really interested in writing poems by myself at first because I always felt that the poems I wrote didn't convey my ideas and that it didn't sound right since I couldn't produce good rhymes in the poems. (I looooove to read them though ^_^).
However, after you discussed the matters of poetry with us and shared your knowledge about poetry, I became really interested in it especially after you let us work on some assignments such as writing the view of the barn in different feelings. Only then, I began to realize the beautiful elements of poetry. In addition, I also began to realize my sentimentality to the surrounding.
I also find that writing poems is not as difficult as I used to think it was. I realize that i just have to follow the flow of ideas in my head and write it with emotions. The breaking-up-the-lines method is very useful to me to writing poems.
Again, I really thank you with great sincerity for sharing us with the amazing elements of poetry and at the same time, making me interested in poetry. Please visit B*rma some time later if you have the chance. We'll all be looking forward to seeing you again.

Yours sincerely,
Angel* ("following-the-flow" girl) ^_^

[haha921]

This is to thank you for coming a long way to here and teaching us great stuff. I've never had poetry workshop like this and I think we learnt a lot from these two days eventhough it was only 3 hours altogether.

I really liked the way you asked us to write and describe about a particular farm in different moods, such as sad, happy, scared, and in love. This brings out how poems and words can really express the mood.

I also learned how to write poems. For example, borrowing a line, words or phrases from poems that we like.

ANd Again, I would like to thank you for flying here and sparing us some time to help us learn more about poetry and how to appreciate it.

[StandAlone]

Dear Alexa,

It is a pleasure to have you teaching us poetry. Your lessons are very interesting and friendly. It makes me think deeper every time I write poetry now. The activities were fun! It would be great if you could stay longer and teach us more. The best part that I loved during your lessons is the ‘silent-thinking’ part, thinking right after a new idea has been introduced. Another great thing is the ‘farm stable’ thing, in which we had to imagine how a stable looks like to a person in different emotions. The way you taught was great! The interacting and activities were superb. I hope you could teach us again someday and I hope it will be for a long time!

Thanks,
StandAlone

[bakz]

Dear Alexa

Thank you for coming to our class for teaching us about poetry. Honestly, I didn't actually know about poetry before, but now I realized that poetry is something special besides other genre of literature. Your workshops were really helped me to learn how to identify its emotion and atmosphere of the poem, and I learned a knowledge of poetry that you shared with us . Especially writing poetry activity was really helped me that I enjoyed a lot! It was a first time I wrote my poem so this experience was very precious and special to me. Thank your for coming to share us your knowledge of poetry once again. It was a pleasure to meet you and learning poetry by a wonderful poet. I hope to see you again if there's a chance!

Sincerely,

bakz

(the one who wrote poem on superman! )

[choxyspace]

Dear Alexa,
Thank you very much for coming to B*rma and sharing your knowledge and experience. Because of your workshops I have started writing poems again. It was a great experience. Even though, I was familiar with most of what we did, some how I still learnt a lot. My interest in poetry was revived. The exercise in which we had to describe the barn from different perspectives really helped me. Now I have more ideas of what I should write about. I am using that handout of all the tips about writing poetry. After your workshops I wrote my best poems ever. They are good enough to be published. Every time I read those poems I understand something new about the poem and my ideas. Thank you for working so hard with us. We were all fascinated by your height!
Yours sincerely,
Ankit

[Mud]

Dear Ms. Alexa Mergen,
I really liked your presentation and the workshop which we worked on. I likes the exercise where you told us to write for a few minutes not stopping and let the things that comes in mind be written on the paper. It's been years that I've been doing that kind of exercise. We call it " Brain Gue". I really appreciated you coming to my country and our classroom. You kind of helped boost up ideas for our poetry portfolio project. You are one of the most intelligent English teachers that I have ever met. I wish you stay longer or come visit our class again to help us edit our poems for our portfolio. You made the English so fun.
Friendly,
Mud

[ringmybella]

Dear Alexa,

Thank you Alexa for coming in to teach our class! It really helped us to get to learn poetry better. Most of the people in our class have speech and drama and we did a big poetry unit then, but your workshop showed us many different points of view of poetry. I really learned a lot, especially from the farm poems. I liked how we were in points of view of different people with different emotions. It really made me focus on how that person might feel and how they might view the world with that emotion. I especially liked when we had to write from a sad point of view. I don’t know why, but the sad was something I could really relate to. (Not that I’m always feeling sad of course  ) When we were writing the sad poems, I really got into the character and I realized that in my world of sadness, it always rains. It always rains, the skies are dark and gray, everything is motionless, the weather is damp, it smells, and it’s really…cold. I really liked the exercises you did with us, they really helped (they really did  ), and I hope you visit Myanmar again so you can spread your charm!

Sincerely,
Sara
(the one you were going to be partners with but Sion came :P haha)

[Go_Rush]

Dear. Alexa Mergen

I was really glad to meet you. It was the first time that I've met a poet in real. When you explained about poetry and all to us and whatever we asked, you could answer all of our questions. It was really imressive. At the same time, I thought that 'I can also answer most questions about soccer if others ask.' It's good for me that I have a thing that I'm into just like you love poetry and all. After you came here, I have written many poems recently and I enjoyed it as well. Also, I have learned some new poets and poems that have different style and meaings. I also learned that depends on the mood of the poem, I should read the pome either slowly or fast. Thank You so much ^^

[Watersfish]

To Alexa Mergen,
I truly enjoyed teh workshops we did in class. Specially the time we were given to write poetry on a particular topic and/or style. I finally started writing poetry again. I haven't had much to write about for the past yearor two, but, it seems as if my interest in poetry is coming backas well as my tendency to read books.
N K

[x.ZoI\I!x~~]

Dear Alexa,

We, as a sophormore class, thank you for visiting our class, out of your busy schedule, and giving us tips for writing poems. Every year, I used to dread about writing poems whenever it was the time of the poetry unit. I felt that it was useless playing around with words and describing ordinary objects in different ways. However, your two-day workshop has taught me to appreciate the process of writing poems, in a different perspective. I personally enjoyed the activity of writing about a barn with four different emotions. It helped me greatly to actually think about the atomosphere and mood of the person experiencing those four emotions...
It would've been better if we had a longer lesson coz we were able to discuss deeply about the way different poems were structured.
Thank you soooooo much and i hope you have another chance of visiting b*rma again.. :D

P.S = i love the quote *Tell all the truth but tell it slant...*

Yours sincerely,
RoSe ~~ o_0

[Xkira]

Dear Alexa
Thank you for coming to our class! I really enjoyed your lessons about poetry. I thought only poets write poems, but I learned that we could be poets too! Just by interpreting our thoughts, we all were ready to write poems. For me, now I am ready to write poems for my poetry portfolio. I already wrote 4 poems! I used different emotions to write them, I think they were very successful. There is one activity that I remember very clearly. We were supposed to write one short sentence to say it infront of the class. I really enjoyed that activity. Once again, I thank you for all of your preparations for us! Thank you!

[chAos-D-]

Thank you for coming to our class Alexa and teaching us all about poetry. As one would say your teaching is unique and is different from other that it is out of bounds and has no limits. You teaching has given has a whole new meaning of poetry and in our own definition not in which we were told what poetry was and we were all yet amazed at your height. How tall are you? Your visit to you class has been really a gift, the little exercises has involved all the students in our class and made all of us active no matter how shy or unwilling a person was. The fact that we were all involved made this little workshop interesting and we could know the little things we do not know about a person.

[God SMUrF]

Dear Alex Mergan
Thank you Very much for coming to our class and taling to us about peoty. I learn alot , about peotry itself and the processes of writing poety. You gave me a new way of viewing poetry. I thought peoty was just a waste of time, boring verses that the teacher made us do. What worked best for me was how we did the different activities to write a gilf poem. Peotry improves like somewhere. I also like how we get inspiration by focusing on one moment from memory, I think that worked really well for me. I also like how we get to choose what we want to learn from the list that you gave us. I think that was really helpful. Again, Thank You very much for visiting use and doing a peotry workshop with us.

TRL

[bert]

Dear Alexa,
Hi, I’m the girl that was standing next the plant in the second class. I just want to thank you for giving up your time to help the class with our poetic skills. The exercises that you have given us helped our speech and writing techniques.
I really liked it when we met in the smaller group and you told us to jot down a list after you gave us a word. For example, “somewhere” and we described a place. For me, at first I just made a regular list. Then it started to flow into a poem.
You also shoed us how speech and the way a poem is read by different people, can change the poems mood and sometimes its meaning. Another thing that you pointed out was the way poems are written, it kind of influences the way we read it, no matter who is reading the poem. I never realized that the poems structure affected the way people read it.
Again, thank you for opening my eyes to poetry, explaining in-depth about meanings of poetry and giving exercises to help with writing poetry.
thanks yo

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