Pedagogy Forum, Week 2

Trista's pedagogy forum that alludes to the question as to whether creative writing can be taught--which I also believe to be a tired, but always present question--led me to think about the presumptions (i.e. poetry comes out of inspiration or thin air) of creative writing and how, as a teacher, one might try to deconstruct such presumptions in the first few creative writing classes they teach. Doing so could lay the foundation for a more integrative understanding that creative writing is, in fact, a skill not entirely developed innately, if at all. Therefore, by organizing and developing linguistic exercises through improvisation, free-writing, or other forms of writing could reveal the creative process involved in writing poetry or other forms of creative writing. As an unnamed professor told me, learning to write can be a bit like learning how to golf. Certain stances in golf create a sense of physical awkwardness that can be compared to the awkwardness of creating highly unusual utterances with language and therefore, takes much skill to teach that aspect of writing.