Day One: The class met for the first time at the Glencoe Public Library. Our first group creation was a Letter Poem centering on the letter "q", which turned out to look like infinity, a flag, a brown stick (?). Next we created a word chain, a poem centering on free association and bridging the gap between two vastly different ideas. In the last half of class, we used the "title list" method to create poems made up entirely of song, book, or poem titles. Lastly, Mr. O'Connor introduced the class to the "Sliding Door" poem, in which the writer reflects upon what his life or the life of another might have been like had he chosen to act in a different way. While some chose to reflect on the results of large and difficult choices they had made, others focused on much smaller, seemingly unimportant decisions that might, nevertheless, have changed lives.
Day Two: A power outage at the Glencoe Public Library after Tuesday night's big storm meant that class took place at the Glencoe Village Hall instead. The court-like setting, complete with podiums, working microphones, and a semi-circle of raised council chairs for the class to sit in, made it pretty clear that we needed to make some new laws for Glencoe, America, or maybe just the entire world. In lists or poetry, we outlawed rude driving, annoying neighbors, towns without a Starbucks, and the dark, among other things. In the second half of the workshop, workshop members wrote and shared"I Remember" poems, lists in which each line must start with the words "I Remember".
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