PhoneMe Workshop at Ritsumeikan

Last week, the PhoneMe Team organized a workshop with Ritsumeikan Academic Exchange students. This workshop was done as part of a poetry writing workshop series run by Rits Student Support Associate (SSA) Amber Moore, who designed this series in response to Rits students requesting additional opportunities to practice their English language speaking and writing skills. As such, previous to our PhoneMe session, students had played with language during workshops called: “‘Blacking out’ with erasure poetry” and “Pursuing poetry through rapid fire writing.”

This PhoneMe workshop with a small group of keen Rits student poets was fun and interactive. We debuted a new brainstorming strategy during this session as well; students were invited to pause and think about a signficant place or space, and then, in three minutes, speak in a stream of consciousness to the group about why it is important to them. As the students each took a turn describing their spot duringtheir alotted 3 minutes, everyone else took point-form notes on what the speaker was saying as well as what resonated with them as they listened. Our poets then used these notes to write their PhoneMe poems, working with the “Here the world is…” template.

By the end of the session, two Rits students submitted poems entitled “My grandmother’s house” and “Guadalajara,” which are now posted on the blog. Go check them out!