Colin Ahern – Opinions Editor & Isabelle Callan – Contributor

         The absence of a poetry club is a huge missed opportunity for students at Bishop’s. After the Empathy, Social Justice, and the Arts event took place on Dec. 16, it was clear that there is no shortage of poetry on campus. The event, a poetry reading night featuring poet Naaz and hosted by Dr. Shoshannah Bryn Jones Square, was extremely popular and begged the question: Why is there no poetry club if there is this much interest? 

This would be an invaluable club to form as it could serve as an intersection for much of the creative writing done at Bishop’s. The club could meet biweekly and focus on the sharing of ideas and themes among different forms of poetry. Similarly, with the existing solid foundation of writers, this club could be an access point for new writers to get feedback and assistance.

         The nature of the club has many advantages since professors from the English department could serve as guest speakers. Students within the club would become more acquainted with the English literature professors, and students outside the department would still be able to receive high quality feedback on their literary forays. 

A poetry club serves as a venue to sharpen creative writing skills, something that classes often do not sharpen, instead assigning argumentative essays. Similarly, for many English students, classes that cover literature offer few opportunities to apply the knowledge gained in the classroom. A poetry club would offer students a forum to creatively engage with the material they have encountered in the classroom. 

Students who minor in literature have even fewer opportunities to engage in writing, since they have a stricter set of classes to attend that are focused largely on contextualizing English as a discipline (although the English department also offers minors in English, film and media studies, and communications). For example, in most 100-level English classes, teachers will use poems and short stories to provide context for different periods of literature. 

Unfortunately, these classes rarely have the time to offer an opportunity for students to write poetry of their own because of the scope of the class. A club would encourage students to apply this knowledge while working with peers who are similarly interested in improving their writing skills.