GLYPH-cation!

As a visiting teaching artist for the Poetry Foundation, I facilitated a workshop titled “GLYPH-cation! Learn & Create Hybrid Poetry.” We created graphic poems and also explored how visual elements helped us with our editing process.

In this two-hour workshop, we had three exercises.

ONE

Each participant found poetic energy from Louise Glück’s “Chicago Train” (Firstborn, ECCO Press. 1983), then they discussed their favorite lines and whether they should become images or remain words on the paper. This is a simple way to approach and create a graphic poem. Everyone had a different favorite part. They did well explaining why they liked the part and why they wanted to translate it into images or for it to remain as words.

It was important for participants to present their ideas to the group, because editing needs to be logical and organized. If they do not know their choices, they may not know where they lead. Verbal expressions can be key to keeping our minds on track, and the habit of presenting proactively guides us to choose the current best step.

TWO

The five senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) are helpful tools for creating graphic poetry because visual elements allude to those senses to allow greater immersion. But how can we translate those senses into graphic poems?

In this exercise, participants translated foreign sounds of a Japanese waka poem and wrote letters by asemic writing. Asemic writing is a hybrid of text and image. It looks like calligraphy or a child’s scribbling, and the letters do not have any specific meaning. Participants observed Karla Van Vliet’s asemic writing examples in She Speaks Tongues (Anhinga Press, 2021).

The first step was for participants to listen to Japanese waka and express their thoughts according to the sounds. Then, I introduced examples of English translations to help the participants learn the meaning of the sounds. I used Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (New Directions, 1976) and Peter MacMillan’s One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each (Penguin Classics, 2018).

Waka poems may not be common in everyday reading, especially the sounds of the original language. In this workshop, the participants used their sense of hearing to deal with unknown sounds, sharpening their senses in preparation for creating engaging poems. The participants used colorful pens, pencils, and paper cutouts. This was also an exercise to get creative with common, everyday items. The results were phenomenal; the participants’ graphic translations with asemic writing were truly beautiful.

THREE

For the final exercise, participants translated their own written poem into a graphic poem. The process was very similar to the previous two exercises. They found their poetic energy from the piece and decided which parts to translate or keep written and how they would do so.

Upon reflection, this final exercise might not be a good format for an online workshop. In other words, if we had a live workshop, the results might be more vivid. Participants who created graphic poems for the first time might have less hesitation if they used someone else’s poems, such as Louise Glück’s, or were guided by steps in the second exercise. Or, we might need more than 45 minutes for the workshop. Some participants shared their work with me after the workshop, and they were fantastic.

Concluding Thoughts

Through the three exercises, participants learned how to translate a written poem into a graphic poem. Each participant had a couple of short presentations to explain how they approached and translated their piece into a graphic poem. We undeniably encouraged each other. The question-and-answer process we used may be useful as a tool to edit their works in the future. Their presentations and decisions were inventive and exciting.