Poetry: From Basics to Brilliant

Summary of presentation by Bob Crow and Joan Carter

Rukmini Kalamangalam demonstrated how to bring poetry from basic to brilliant, showing her passion for poetry and using her dynamic style to inform and involve the audience.

Her tips for enhancing poetry (and other writing):

• Get rid of filler words
• Go farther with everything (connections, metaphors, etc.)
• Don’t worry about everyone getting everything
• Go wild – do everything you’ve ever dreamed of
• Get it on paper
• READ

Kalamangalam showed slides and read poems by a variety of authors, including a standard poem followed by a prose poem, a pantoum, and a sestina. She described how the forms differed from each other.

The prose poem is easier than free verse because there are no rules about line breaks or form. It resembles prose but reads like a poem.

The pantoum, initially created as a type of song, consists of four-line stanzas, the second and fourth lines of which become the first and third lines of the next. It’s an interesting way to play with the meaning of words, with no need to stick right to the rules.

Writing the sestina starts by picking six words These are the endings of your lines in six-line stanzas. The chosen words rotate from one stanza to the next—the word ending the first line in the initial stanza will end the second line in the second stanza, etc. This form plays again with word meanings. It’s a cool way to get into a headspace which views words more carefully.

Kalamangalam encouraged us to make all of our writing more vivid, breaking rules as poets do. She led us in exercises that challenged our creativity, so we directly experienced major points she was sharing. First, we wrote a poem (any poetry form) using nouns as verbs. Then we wrote about a favorite topic without employing our customary descriptive words. Several WAG members said they found this session very informative and fun.

She closed with a suggested reading list:

“Afterland” – Mai Der Vang

“Night Sky with Exit Wounds” – Ocean Vuong

“Don’t Call us Dead” – Danez Smith

“Virgin” – Analicia Sotelo

“Silencer” –  Marcus Walker

Kalamangalam is a current freshman at Emory University. In 2018, she was named Youth Poet Laureate of the Southwest and a National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. Prior to her induction as Houston’s Youth Poet Laureate (2017-2018), she was on Houston’s youth slam poetry team, Meta-Four Houston.

Her poem “After Harvey” was set to music by the Houston Grand Opera. She has been published by the Houston Chronicle, ABC 13 Visions, Houston Public Media, Mutabilis Press, and The Apprentice Writer. She has been recognized nationally by Scholastic Writing Awards.