Poe[Meme]s: Plan of Study (1st Draft)

by León De la Rosa Carrillo

A three-day workshop where young poets will be introduced to the expressive language of internet memes and guided through the production of their very own poe[MEME]s. The workshop will take place from July 18th-20th at the Santa Rosa Branch Library, 1075 S. 10th Ave. Tucson, AZ.

Day 1 (July 18th).

  • Learners will be asked to share their own favorite poem.

    • If they have not written poetry before, they will be asked to share their favorite poem by somebody else.

  • Learners will be shown the video Know your Neighbor: Samuel, the Concise Poet.

  • Concise and succinct poetry will be discussed.

    • Are a few words enough?

    • How many words does poetry require?

  • Learners will break into small groups of two or three participants each.

  • As a group, they will exchange the poems they shared previously.

  • Learners will be guided through a haiku-writing exercise in which the object will be to rewrite their peer’s poem as a collection of 3 or four haikus

  • The haikus will be shared and discussed as a class.

  • Learners will be guided through an internet search for images that are related to the haikus they just wrote and shared.

  • Google’s safe search will be used in order to ensure that all content gathered is age appropriate.

Day 2 (July 19th).

  • Learners will be shown the videos Visual Culture Online and Animated GIFs: Birth of a Medium.

  • Internet memes and their language will be discussed.

    • Can they be art?

    • Can they be poetry?

  • Learners will be introduced to the properties and production process of Captioned Animated GIFs (CAG).

    • Anatomy of CAG.

    • Continuity of action.

    • Frame rate.

    • Short captions.

  • Learners will begin producing series of CAG for each of the Haikus they wrote based on their peers poetry.

Day 3 (July 20th).

  • Learners will finish production their series of CAG.

  • As a class we’ll discuss how we’ll showcase the Poe[meme]s produced.

    • Will all be shown?

    • All together?

    • Each by itself?

  • As a class we will all set up the showcase as part of TYPS’ monthly Poetry Slam.
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