Monday, April 11, 2011

Awards Ceremony

I went to the awards ceremony at school for the English club writing awards. I was one of the judges. The other two couldn't find a time to meet with me, so we did it by email, and the truth is, they let me choose the poems. It wasn't hard to do. Actually, I agreed almost completely with one of the judges and not at all with the other, but she wasn't very invested in which poems got chosen, and none of them came except me. The fiction was very very good, but the poems were far weaker as a group. They have had good teaching in fiction workshops, evidently. Perhaps not so much in poetry workshops, where they have had no consistency since Michelle left. One of the winners said she would like to be in my class, so I told her to ask the chairs if I can teach it come next spring. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

3 comments:

Marly Youmans said...

Good thought. Hope it works!

Robbi N. said...

Me too. But I suppose I will have to ease up a bit. I was very serious when I taught the workshop, and blunt about the students' poems. It is hard, in fact, for me not to be blunt. That is just how I am made.
But the people who stayed, those who were not already excellent poets (and there were a couple), produced very good stuff, and learned a heck of a lot about poetry, so they told me.
I'm not sure it was fun and games though. In my intro creative writing class, it was more fun and games; in the poetry one, it was more serious, but since it was the second one in the series, I thought that was more appropriate. Apparently, the students didn't. Many dropped, thinking it was an instant A.

tudor3x8 said...

Hello, Professor Nester, perhaps you don't remember me, but I was the girl who got second in the writing contest in the fiction category.
Anyways, I just ran into your blog and saw this post. Just wanted to say hello!

PS. I haven't taken any creative writing courses yet. It's all in my brain so far.