Self Reflective essay - Shreyasi

I really liked reading the graphic novels (since it was also my first experience with them), the discussions which we had in the classroom and coming up with dialogues for the visuals that we were being introduced to. 

I want to write poems and I want to write better poems. Attending the classes which talked about graphic novels helped me a lot in how I think poems. I could not just understand what transition meant while creating a good comic space (e.g.- ‘aspect to aspect’, ‘action to action’, etc.) but I also wanted to use it in my poetry. The course of Ways of reading in the end finally helped me in taking one more step forward to understand the best way an idea can be said, the tools which can be used to express a thought and a moment, and also provided us with challenges, ideas and writing that we like to experiment with. Throughout the course, I wanted to write a comic. But since I had no or next to no ability, chose to stick with writing. I also realized that creating a comic would involve more of my time in starting from scratch (like downloading apps or using crayons, water colours, etc).

I however wish I could have drawn one narrative and submitted it for evaluation. After all, the course at various points really interested me and inspired me enough to go back home and challenging myself. But every time I sat to draw, I realized I had no faculties to draw, that I needed to learn to draw also and I was scared to experiment with something that I had last encountered in school. All this really required time and because of the hectic courses this semester I was not able to work on any of the visual prompts. I also realized that I would be graded on my submissions and I thought that it would be better to improve something that I really wanted to cultivate more – writing poems – rather than work on something new. I can do that in holidays!

Along the way I discovered some interesting poems like Kaveh Akbar’s My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare, Snow on the Desert by Agha Shahid Ali. I am glad I came across The God of Small Things because that also gave insight in how to write children and their voices, their thoughts, their concerns. 

Throughout this semester, I have worked on this thought – ‘site of good writing is the sense of being understood.’ How I have done it is by using terms that I hear people speaking more so that means the incorporating dialogues or lyrics of song as they were (hindi or english), employing alliteration, and also writing about same thing but in different poems. The later, is what was the most interesting part of my reflection – as that made me realise that there is still so much more I can say about shifting, for example, or that talking about loss of home can also be talking about loss of a chair. And that there can be two different poems for talking about it separately and jointly too. 

It matters how you say things. It also matters what things you choose to say how that thing matters.