A look inside Theory and Practice of Poetry and Fiction

by Fred Chang, TALON Managing Editor|September 29, 2014

As the last drop falls, a silence blankets the room. Ten, twenty seconds pass.

“That ending was very intriguing.”

Welcome to Theory and Practice of Poetry and Fiction, affectionately nicknamed TPOPF (pronounced tee-pop, with a silent f), where timed writings and strict rules go out the window and creativity floods Alexandra Rosenboom’s classroom every 5th period. Aside from the poetry and fiction read and discussed in the course, the selling point is the class’s roundtable workshops.

“It’s more like a community in the sense that we’re all gathering together to comment on each others poems and its really interesting and fun,” said Austin Lai (12).

Every Thursday and Friday, the class gathers around a long oval table and reads over work written by each student, discussing each piece in depth for 15 minutes. This setup is designed to mimic a real poetry workshop group, and has proved effective. However, despite the emphasis placed on creating a supportive environment, students still experience some warranted anxiety when their poems are the ones being analyzed.

“I guess its kind of nerve-racking at first because right after someone first reads your poem you’re just waiting for someone to say something but after you hear what they have to say they always say the positives first and then they give you something to improve on,” said Priscilla Pan (12).

Because the workshop pieces are rarely given a specific prompt, students are free to write whatever they feel inspired to create.

“I really enjoy how creative [the class] lets us be, because unlike any other English class, we can write about whatever we want without and rules or guidelines to tell us where to go,” said Jai Ahuja (12). “Every other class always has a rubric and a strict curriculum, meaning if we want to do well, we should stick to those. TPOPF is really a chance for us to grow as writers and challenge ourselves to create something unique, without having us worry that our writing won’t get us an ‘A.’”

TPOPF’s 5th period has become less of a class and more of a group of friends going on random tangents and helping each other write better.