Wednesday, March 30, 2016

For Friday: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

REMEMBER, no class on Friday: instead, you could go to the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival which starts at 9:30 and continues at 11:00, 2:00, 3:00 and 7:00. Here is the entire schedule for Thursday-Saturday, so you can find a time that suits you: http://ecuscissortail.blogspot.com/2016/01/2016-scissortail-schedule-of-readings.html

If you attend a session, answer ALL FOUR of the questions below for an extra credit bonus. This can take the form of missed responses, missed classes, or simply extra points on your final grade. The amount of responses or absences I forgive is based on how detailed/engaged your answers are. For example, if you respond to each question with a 1-2 sentence response and I can't really tell if you even attended a session, I might not be able to give you any credit. But if I can see that you put some thought into it and really responded to what you observed at the reading, I can excuse up to 3 absences or 3 missed responses. So take notes as you watch so you can answer these questions with thought and detail. You can bring these responses to class on Tuesday. 

THE QUESTIONS (answer all 4):

Q1: Which of the authors interested you the most and why? Why did you respond their poems and/or story and why might you read more from this author?

Q2: Which piece (if any) did you find difficult to follow or understand and why? Is is simply not your kind of material, or was it too vulgar, or depressing, or confusing? If you liked all the pieces you heard by each writer, answer this instead: how did each author's reading work together as a whole? Why did these 3 (or 4) writers work well together? Was there any common themes or ideas that seemed to link them together?

Q3: Discuss briefly how the authors presented their material: their reading style, introductions, gestures, and other details that helped you appreciate the stories/poems. In other words, how did the authors help you understand their work through their performance?

Q4: How did the audience react to these authors/works? Did certain works get more response than others--and if so, why? Did people laugh? Were they completely silent. Did people seem to 'get' these writers, or did some leave them scratching their heads? How could you tell?


2 comments:

  1. Q1: I was only able to see two speakers on Friday, but the one I found very interesting was Brady Peterson. It seemed like all his writings had something to do with war of some sort. Not sure what war it was, but it seem to affect him greatly growing up and I thought that was pretty cool.
    Q2: The other speaker I was able to listen to was Walter Bargen. He seem to be very smart, but I just couldn't understand what his writings were about. I wish he would have been more organize with his topics of his writings, maybe had a common theme if that makes sense.
    Q3: I really like how Brady Peterson started. He started by giving his metaphor for writing, thought that was cool. Then he just started reading his works, not really giving a intro to each work, but letting us hear it without any expectation from him. Walter Bargen started with a funny poem to break the ice and then just gave an intro to each of his other writings before reading it.
    Q4: For a lot of Walter's works people laughed. He would use sexual jokes to get some laughter from the audience. Brady Peterson really didn't give the audience time to be silent or laugh or give an applause for his work. His was very quick through his readings. People really knew the people's writings. An example is the last reading for Brady was about rain. It was a very vague poem, but yet everyone gave a little gasp at the end of it.

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  2. Q1: The author that I enjoyed the most was Chera Hammons. I like her poems because I related to them more, coming from a small town where there isn't much to do.
    Q2: I didn't understand any of Ann Howells. I understood that they were supposed to be descriptive and funny, but I just never found it very descriptive nor funny. I noticed that she kept saying things that made most of the audience laugh, but I never understood it. Maybe some of that was because I didn't quite catch all of it she said or if it had something to do with my age.
    Q3: All of the authors took the same approach to reading their poems I felt, but two of them did better. John Yozzo read his in a very funny manner and was very enjoyable. His poems had me laughing. Chera Hammons read hers in a very easy going manner and with a voice that actually transported you into Bomb city. I didn't enjoy Ann Howell's at all. I felt she read hers horribly and didn't use enough description for me. I also felt that she took way much more time explaining where she got the inspiration from her poem and why she wrote it rather then actually reading her poems.
    Q4: More people laughed at Ann Howell's and John Yozzo's poems. The audience really seemed to enjoy all three of the poets. However, they might have enjoyed An Howell's more because there was more laughter and agreeing to what she was saying.

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