As a reminder, the Revolutionary Poets Society focuses on global opportunities to respond to the demands of the moment through poetry, music and art. We focus on the development of vocabulary and a set of critical, literacy, and performance approaches to help enable engagement with slam poems and spoken-word poems on aesthetic terms.

The current syllabus for this class is available here. I’m using this website to serve as my learning management system and share all materials. I hope you’ll join us over the coming weeks as we think, discuss, and write.

We’ll use the hashtag #RevolutionaryPoets to organize all materials across social media (mostly Twitter). I’ll encourage my students to share materials and follow along on the discussion there. Please join us.

Now…let’s get to week one! 🙂

Consider

As we start to meet and connect, we recognize that fact that we are not clean slates. We all come with experience, dreams, and scars.

We may running from something in our past. We might have certain stories to tell ourselves to keep our sanity.

Sometimes we have the tools to deal with these challenges, and other times we need to reach out for support from others.

Please note: The video above, To This Day, is an animated version of a spoken word poem written by Shane Koyczan. In the poem Koyczan talks about bullying he and others received during their lives and its deep, long-term impact.

You can listen to more about this poem and the challenges of growing up in his TED Talk.

Your response

We’re joining each other in the middle of the story. We might have a place that we’ve come from, or that we’re going to. We might be on a journey to a bigger goal, or we might be living in the present moment.

So, as we begin, please redefine who are you.

Open up a clean writing space in a Google Doc.

Write down six words that identify who you are…or would like to be.

At this point, you’re most likely going to ask for specifics about the six word memoir. I will provide none. Select six words that define who you are…or who you would like to be.

Please note: The six word memoir is a way that I like to start people off as they begin large writing and creation projects.

There are multiple origin stories for the six word memoir, but many indicate that it started as a project by Smith Magazine.

Connect with others

If possible, share your six word memoir with others.

Ask them to read what you’ve shared and have them tell you who they think you are based on what you’ve written.

After they share, and you (hopefully) have some dialogue, go back to the Google Doc with your original six word memoir. You may choose to leave it alone, edit, or write a new six word memoir. All options are appropriate.

At the bottom of that doc, complete out a free write (500 words) indicating who you are, and what you thought as others in the group learned more about you.

Share the link for this Google Doc out to our class in Google Classroom…if that is appropriate.

You can also share your work out to the socials if you want. Please use the hashtag #RevolutionaryPoets. You can share as much…or as little as you’d like.

Enjoy…and let’s connect with each other online. 🙂

Cover Image Credit