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Eco-Poetics
Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Eco-Poetics: How to Write Productively During the Pandemic

It’s a weird time. No one can deny it.

We’re stuck at home, sitting, lying down, and doing almost everything else virtually. Although it can be convenient, eating, sleeping, and working in the same place is mentally straining and doesn’t help our already unstable emotional states.

Reading the news doesn’t help either. There are always new cases of COVID-19, which adds more anxiety and worry to our already stressed-filled hermit lives.

To release some of the stress and anxiety, why not… write it all down?

potted flowers by a window
Thursday, May 2, 2019

May flowers: some poems that survived the winter

Spring is here. The birds are singing, the snow has melted, and flowers are poking up through the dirt, both where they are expected and where they are not. At the beginning of winter term, I wrote a blog post on freewriting with a focus on my notebook as an agent of the writing process. I’d like to come back to this general topic, but from a slightly different perspective: spring.

How to get yourself in a creative mindset
Monday, April 15, 2019

The poetics of originality: how to be creative

Why is creativity so elusive? We see artists and poets and marvel agape at their powers of creation, but in truth creativity is a learned thing – a practice of insight and introspection. You too have the potential to produce art almost as good as the greats, if only you look in the right places. It doesn’t matter that no one’s listening.

open notebook
Thursday, January 17, 2019

A pen in the hand: a reflection on freewriting

When was the last time you sat down with a pen and paper, and just wrote something? I’m talking about you and your own creativity, no prompt whatsoever. I can guess what you’re thinking. University is busy and finding time is hard. Why use a pen and paper when everything is handed in electronically? Why would someone use writing as a break from more writing? These are valid thoughts, but before you tune out, let me tell you about my notebook, and why pen and paper have become my best friends over the past few years.

The word poetry is spelled out in colourful letters against an orange backdrop.
Monday, April 9, 2018

Writing genre series: Poetry analysis

In our last two writing genre series blog posts, I offered some tips on Graduate School Applications and Catharina discussed the conventions of Lab Report writing. Her upcoming genre topic will be Visual Arts Analysis and you can check it out on April 16th! In this writing genre instalment, on Poetry Analysis, I will provide pointers for poking and prying at poems to peruse and pick up on the poem’s pronouncements and purport.

An blue typewriter sits on a wooden desk. A paper and a cup of coffee are also pictured to the left of the typewriter.
Monday, February 26, 2018

Important & influential female authors: To name only a few!

International Women’s Day is coming up on March 8th and the University of Waterloo’s Women Centre will be celebrating International Women’s Week starting March 5th. On Monday the 5th, read Kate’s blog post about books that feature compelling female protagonists!

A sepia picture of an old style mic on a dark background with 3 spotlights
Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Spoken word poetry

English is an evolving field. The mediums in which it manifests itself have grown numerously and have shown different trends of popularity. In the times of Shakespeare, older prose and plays were very modern, whereas today novels and spoken word poetry seem more prevalent. That might mostly stem from the fact that we live in the Information Age and that expression is the new frontier. Everyone has the ability to create and put their ideas out there into the world. One very modern way of doing so, which has found its way into popular media, is spoken word.

Friday, October 30, 2015

New! Improved?

During my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto, I took a class on a Roman poet named Catullus. For a long semester I laboured over his poetry, trying to wrestle his sophisticated Latin phrases into easy English.  From all the hundreds of lines of his poetry that I worked on, one word stands out in my memory: palmulas.