Reflecting on another blog post – (LINK)
I selected Nina’s blog post for a few reasons, they have the same name as my housemate and their surname O’Reilly is Irish, connecting my personal surroundings to the Blog directory to help me work through the number of participants or active bloggers.
Nina’s micro-teaching session, was quite unique, in the sense that they built their hobby into the session, and reflected their love for poetry and how it could be used to disseminate or deconstruct the art world through another form of art practice. similar to using imagery/photography to describe a sense of emotions surrounding the idea of storytelling. Nina expresses the general opinion around what poetry brings to conversations that is boring and difficult but was surprised by the active participants of the other students.
Nina started with a group activity and reading Anne Sexton’s ekphrastic poem that describes that of Vincent van Gogh’s starry night. A beautiful reflection of the emotive state of Starry night and how it transcends that of just a gallery experience, the following task was a student objective that Nina provided other pieces of famous art and asked students to recite their thoughts and feelings in an ekphrastic poem. The objective was to last 5-8 minutes, and students were encouraged to respond in any way they felt was right.
My favourite out of Nina’s selection was Frida Kahlo’s: Self Portrait with a Monkey 1940. The poem recites :
“Oh Frida, eyebrows bushy like the jungle
Stoic, calm and powerful
Dominant like the Queen of the jungle.
Mimicking monkey”. Student’s words
Nina then reflects that the response to the meaning of the ekphrastic poetry allowed the students to provide a creative response to their task, allowing a genuine and honest approach to the student’s creative observations.
Nina’s feedback was positive and she responded well to the ideas set forth, providing space and an umbrella term of calling it an activity, I disagreed with this, as poetry is an art form an activity like this still needs to have a finalised outcome of what is to be expected. Poetry has a place in society and it’s very deserving to combine this task with creative students. I can see myself using this in the future as an icebreaker in opening up the fun and humour that can be found in poetry.
Michala Gyetvai’s work is about celebrating poetry, dance and music through textiles. Beautiful landscapes of expressive colour with deep rich stitches replicating emotions or movements. (LINK)
