Syllabus

ENGL 491.002: 

Senior Portfolio in Creative Writing (Poetry Edition)

Cynthia Hand

Spring 2017

Class Time:  Certain Mondays 10:30-11:45 a.m.

Class Location:  Hemingway Center, Rm 107 

Office Location:  Gateway 119

Office Hours: Tuesdays/ Thursday 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. or by appointment

Cell Phone: (I will give you this during class.) (No calls after 9 pm or before 7 am)

E-mail: cynthiahand@boisestate.edu 

CATALOG COURSE DESCRIPTION

Extensive revision of previous written work in creative writing courses and creation of a portfolio focused on fiction or poetry. (In this case, fiction.)

PREREQUISITES

Prerequisite: Senior standing and PERM/INST.

CREDIT HOURS

Three (3) units.  This translates to approximately 2-3 hours of studying outside of the classroom for every hour you spend in the classroom for the course. (Which means you should spend 6-9 hours per week preparing for this course. Ha. But seriously, how accurate this estimate is depends on how quickly you read and how quickly you write.)

COURSE OBJECTIVES 

To produce a high quality portfolio that represents your best work in poetry writing here at Boise State.

To effectively establish effective habits and new methods in analyzing and revising your own poems.

To study published work as a way of examining the different techniques and aesthetics of professional writers.

In other words: to do your very best work.

COURSE FORMAT

Class will meet every other week or so to workshop. The rest of the class will occur online, with online discussions with the other students, and conferences with Dr. Hand. 

REQUIRED MATERIALS

• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser.
• Access to the internet, a Google account, and a Dropbox account

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Stories:  You will write/revise 15 high quality poems during the semester.  All work must be typed, double-spaced, titled, and page numbered.  Use a 12 point font size in Times New Roman font with one inch margins.  You will upload your poems into your shared Google Doc folder in the appropriate week by 9am on the day the poem is due (see the Workshop Schedule for the specifics).

Workshops: The only time you'll physically be in class will be for workshops (if we decide that we're going to hold physical workshops.)

TPHRM:  Every week I will assign a chapter from The Poetry Home Repair Manual.  You should work on revising one of your poems with that week's chapter in mind, then put your work into your Google Docs folder for me to discuss with you. 

Craft Talks:  You will pick a craft book about the writing of poetry. You will be expected to read this entire book and write a report on what you learned from it during the semester. Please see the Craft Talk page for more details.

Poem Discussions:  As with the Craft Talks, at the beginning of the semester you must pick two poetry collections of your choosing and read them in their entirety. Then, you must type out one of these poems to share in the Google Docs folder. Please see the Poem Discussions page for more details.

Portfolio:  The portfolio will be due at the end of the semester, (May 1 by 12:00pm) and it will constitute 50% of your final grade.  

The portfolio consists of:

• No fewer than 15 of your best poems (although you are free to submit as many as 30).
• A letter that details the revision journey for the pieces in the portfolio—where they started out and the steps you took before you ended up with the finished products.
• A brief report on both of the poetry collections you read for the semester.

COURSE POLICIES

Attendance:  You will be expected to attend workshop.  Simply put, if you miss workshop, your grade will suffer. If you have more than ONE absence for any reason, your grade will drop one grade step for each absence (e.g. A to A-, C-to D. . .) 

Participation: I expect active participation on the website, which means engagement in course materials and in-class assignments, as well as sharing your thoughts and opinions on the class materials online. Each class day I will award you one point for participating in the course and commenting on the content. If you don’t contribute to the virtual class discussion, you will not receive a participation point for the day. 

Extra Credit: I will occasionally bestow an extra participation point if your contribution to the class discussion on a given day was simply outstanding. Here are some other ways you can earn extra credit participation points in my class:

• Attending published fiction or poetry readings.  There are a few of these on campus every semester and several readings in the Boise area.  To get credit you must write a quick response/analysis of the reading.
• Attending amateur readings, such as student readings or area open mics.  Again, you must write up a short response in order to receive credit.
• Commenting in a spectacularly substantive way on the course website.

Google:  Nearly everything that I use in this class (the syllabus, schedule, workshop and presentation schedules, hand-outs, assignments, and so on) is posted in our class Google folder. .

GRADING

50%  Portfolio (The quality, effort, and revision that I find in your collected work at the end of the semester.)

25%  Assignments (Peer response, craft talks, poem discussions, and exercises. I will grade these for quality and effort, but simply whether or not you turn them in is a big part of it.)

25%  Participation (Your level of involvement in class and the quality of your feedback.)

Grading Scale:

A       93-100

         90-92

B+     87-89

B       83-86  

         80-82

C+     77-79

C       73-76

         70-72

D+     67-69

D       63-66

         60-62

F    below 60