New poetry club recruiting members to workshop

Chad Davidson and senior mass communications student Allayah Carr worked together to establish the new UWG poetry club Stanza. Carr originally noticed the need for the club while listening to UWG alumna Diamond Forde speak in Davidson’s advanced creative writing poetry course.

Forde discussed how difficult it can be to find an MFA program and the challenges of actually pursuing the degree. In order to teach poetry at the college level, one would need to acquire his or her MFA. This spoke to Carr as Forde mentioned all of the competitions and events she joined in college and still struggled to find a program that would adhere to what she wanted to do.

Once Carr became aware of the difficulty of acquiring an MFA, she realized the necessity of a poetry club at UWG and how it could help students who have not taken poetry courses but may be interested in the form of expression.

To reach out to potential members, Carr invited students from her poetry class to join.

Stanza’s first meeting was held Friday, March 13, and currently has about five members that regularly attend meetings. The group meets in room 102 in Pafford on Fridays at noon. The club is reaching out to potential members through social media and by word of mouth.

Carr’s hopes that the university will recognize the need to broaden majors and minors for upcoming students and will see the benefit of implementing a new poetry concentration. UWG only offers poetry and fiction courses under the creative writing minor, which requires students to take two introductory courses and two advanced/intermediate courses. When choosing these courses, students must choose between poetry and fiction or non-fiction.

The club as a whole would like to see growth occur as they reach out to more and more students. Stanza wants to invite members from all types of writing backgrounds.

“It’s almost better to have someone at a different place than you are writing wise,” said Stanza’s Vice President Rachel Barda. “Students that maybe don’t have as much experience can show higher-level members things that they maybe have forgotten and inspire their writing.”

Barda also went on to say how hard Carr has worked at her endeavors and how helpful the club is for those wanting feedback on their work.

“Poetry classes don’t offer as much work shopping as the club does,” said Barda. “Writers pay up to thousands of dollars to receive professional feedback for their work while Stanza offers this for free. [Carr] wants to make the club as realistic and true to form as possible.”

Erin

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