Before the course I knew that musicality was one of my strongest craft strengths in poetry, but during the course I learned to challenge that strength. When I was encouraged to play around with metric consistency break up my rhyme schemes, I discovered that a temperament doesn't suffer from being challenged, quite the opposite in fact, and that doing so can make your voice and the message you wish to convey even clearer. When it comes to the imagination temperament, I still gravitate towards my beloved classic images, but I have begun to question my choices before I incorporate a well-known image into an expected context. My prose has likewise flourished from Anna's perceptive feedback and gentle guidance. [W]ith Anna’s supportive one-on-one feedback on my current WIP, I have come to see that a chapter can have some strong passages and a good backbone, and that editing, partially rewriting, and getting a new set of eyes to critique it, can result in a piece much closer to your vision. I love Anne Lammot's Bird by Bird, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Seamus Heaney's Death of a "Naturalist", and Sylvia Plath's Blackberrying. I really enjoyed our class discussions while working with the story and music temperaments in poetry and prose respectively. There were so many writing prompts that inspired me. If I had to choose a few, it would be the dream-poem, triggering town, occasion for speech/obsession, animal encounter, dead letter, and namesake vignette. I approach enjambment in poetry with less confusion and more curiosity now. I am also intrigued by storytelling through the images I weave into my prose. I cannot describe how meaningful Anna's course has been to my development as a writer. I am leaving with a newfound confidence in sharing my work, a curiosity to challenge myself and try out new techniques, and a wide array of creative tools at my disposal, that enable me to bring my visions to life. I am endlessly glad that I attended.
Anna, I think you lead this class very well, you gracefully handled self-conscious writers and moments of hesitation. Your strength is definitely in leading discussion and analysing text to teach what to look for in your own writing. You are very strong on teaching writing theory, we did a lot of text analysis and discussion. Yes! [I now have a better understanding of my strongest craft temperaments.] I would have liked to spend more time on my weaknesses. I enjoyed the workshops most.
I definitely found my stronger temperaments and also found some confidence in them. We've laid the groundwork for working out the ones we're weaker at. I liked the [discussions] most where we analyzed our own prompt writings. The first one, where we discusssed why we write stood out to me. [This course] sparked interest in prose and adapting lyrical language into my prose writing. Generally, blending literary genres. I enjoyed the prompts the most, and maybe it would be possible to give their discussion a little bit more time. Thank you so much, I learned a great deal!
Anna did a great job pointing out both my strengths and weaknesses, addressing how I can improve them. [In terms of discussions I liked the most,] probably the one for Mrs Dalloway or the Ali Smith one. I generally enjoyed the workshops more. [Best writing prompts were] either the vignette or the animal interaction!
I have a clear understanding of what I need to improve and where to take my writing from here. [My favorite readings on craft were] Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, as well as Gregory Orr's essay, which helped me approach the basics of the craft in new and interesting ways. [The discussion I liked the most was] the one on Mrs Dalloway, where we had to defend a specific character. [The best writing prompts were] all of them, but I probably enjoyed the dead letter the most. My other favorites were the ones I based my workshop pieces on. I will try to experiment more with genres and prompts and get out of my comfort zone to develop the temperaments that I do not yet possess. I discovered many writers that I did not yet know during this course. I enjoyed every seminar, and especially how helpful and welcoming everyone was. Thank you so much!
Yes I do [have a better understanding of my strongest craft temperaments]. My strongest is story and I could use work in music and structure. I think I learned the most from Gregory Orr, Mrs. Dalloway, and Thirsty Animals. All three covered a wide array of literary craft that I felt I could apply to my everyday life. Our discussion/ debate about Mrs. Dalloway was super fun and also informative about character creation. Our first writing prompt about the object or animal was fun because it was different than anything I had done before. I really enjoyed the free writes we did do! Overall this course has been incredibly eye opening and inspiring. My incredibly talented peers have been my main motivators and I'm excited to see their names in bookstores someday!
My own perceptions of my strengths and weaknesses regarding the temperaments hasn't changed much, but I've found that others sometimes perceive different strengths in my writing than I do. I also realized that I may be doing better with the story temperament than I initially thought. My favorite literary texts to read and discuss were "Text for the Day" by Ali Smith, "Blackberrying" by Silvia Plath and the excerpt from Jackie Kay's "Trumpet." I enjoyed the text analysis in pairs/ groups and discussing everyone's writing practice. I also enjoyed the workshops. I liked the rapid fire simile and tenor/ vehicle prompts. They help with practicing to convey a larger concept through smaller objects, as well as to show rather than tell. [Regarding the topics this course has sparked my interest in,] I would like to experiement with musciality more in my poetry and prose. Imagination is also something I'd like to develop in my prose, ideally in a way that still feels comfortable with my focus on story and character.
I learned a lot from this course (about poetry in general and how to improve my own) and really enjoyed it. If I’m honest, I enjoyed the discussions & many of the poems, but reading the essays made me feel a bit cynical about academic analysis of poetry. I think I learned the most from the discussion on meter. Writing a ghazal was fun (if unsuccessful) & both of the first two prompts got me back into writing after a long pause. It was great being surrounded by so many people who were engaged with poetry but not too intimidating. Thanks for running this class. It has been one of my most enjoyable during my time at uni and I’ve learned a lot. Please keep it running in future semesters if you can!
My impression is that there were a lot of interesting discussions. I enjoyed the discussion of Late Air. I had read some Elizabeth Bishop previously but for the most part not in great depth, so I appreciated the opportunity to look closely at something that wasn’t completely unfamiliar but which I didn’t know well. I appreciated that we were given prompts and wish I had made use of them but I didn’t feel like I had the time to regularly engage with the prompts during the semester. I thought the workshops were well moderated. I enjoyed, generally speaking, that sections of poems I felt worked were challenged within the workshop. It became increasingly clear to me through the workshops that I had a habit of thinking something worked because I was pleased with myself for having noticed it.
This class helps me to be better prepared for my humanities discussion because we are able to go over what was said in the lecture in more detail. The instructor provides a lot of support and I understand the material much better.
Anna does a really good job of offering herself to help, giving us techniques for interpreting readings and really helping us understand the material.
The discussion period for this course is generally beneficial to helping me understand the material and there are not any issues that I can think of.
Anna is such a great teacher. Even though our class wasn’t the most interactive, she took it in stride and still tried her best to make my classmates raise their hands and participate. She did a great job explaining what we needed to do for each of our papers and helped prepare for the midterm. I appreciated how she would go deeper into parts of the books that Professor Wilson would assign and briefly talk about in class.
Anna made the class much easier to understand and did everything she could to help the students in her section. The quality of comments on assignments was very good.
Anna does a great job of helping out when we are confused and is always there to help us out if needed. The discussions clarify a lot for me, so I want to go to better my understanding.
This was a great course. I expected something a lot less engaging when I registered for WR 121. Anna’s ability to stimulate the students argumentative reasoning is exceptional.
Anna’s strengths were definitely getting people into the topics at hand and could relate to all of us. I was very interested what I was doing.
She was very helpful and very clear with what she was teaching us and what she was expecting from us not only in class but in the assignments as well. She was also very approachable and I felt that I could ask her any questions or concerns I had with anything in class.
The part of this course I felt most helpful were the conferences because it was a way for me to not only receive feedback but also to talk through the feedback and understand clearly where it came from and what it expects. It also helped because it was mandatory, whereas if it weren’t and it was left to office hours, I might have felt less inclined to do it and continue that for future classes. It changed my view on asking for further help with professors on my writing.
I feel like I have become much more confident in my writing and can create a strong debate not just in my writing.
I feel like this course was helpful in my writing. Before this class I did not understand the help of personal anecdotes in a formal essay, but now I do.
A great course. What I thought was going to be my least favorite course became my favorite, in the end.
Learned how to write a strong thesis and how to make my papers stronger!
Anna is informative, patient, and very willing to help clarify any questions about the material or expectations. I thought the class was a good mixture of lecture-style learning and class discussions. I also liked that there were a variety of activities like reading journals and discussions, presentations, and examples of class concepts because relating them to our own experiences made it more understandable. The requirements and feedback on assignments was always clear, fair, and useful.
Anna Ball is a great professor and I feel lucky to have taken her course. I liked how she had us engage with the material, to presenting the material in groups, to moving around the classroom, and giving us great tools to form our essays. She always gave thoughtful and helpful feedback on assignments. It was a very inclusive classroom.
Overall the instructor was very organized and utilized class time well. She was very flexible with in class discussions and approachable.
The instructor seems to really care about the students. Every class helped achieve one of our writing goals. She was good at relating anything to the topic of writing we were covering. Had some very good advice out of class for how to better my essays. Would definitely recommend this teacher.
Overall, a really good course that truly helped me better my writing.
The discussions were always adapted to fit what the class was interested in and understood, and when things were still unclear there was a good amount of focus on clarifying before moving on. Our one-on-one conferences for each essay cycle were really helpful for brainstorming and gaining personalized advice or insight on what was done successfully and what could be improved.
I feel completely refreshed in my writing skills.
I learned a lot about the different roles technology and social media play on our lives as well as improved my writing skills.
Overall, I found the course to be very interesting and engaging. Since there was so many opportunities to write, I’ve found myself learning new skills to take forward into my other classes.
Anna is great – straightforward, able to guide interesting discussions and gives helpful feedback on poems.
I thought the instructor used class time effectively, led class discussions well, and gave helpful and timely feedback on assignments.
Great at guiding our conversations in the right direction and grounding a whimsical group, gets better every week!
I am consistently impressed with how focused and engaged in students poetry Anna is. I think that Anna has been a big influence on my poetry through her attention to detail and willingness to take students work seriously. She sets a positive example of how one can be both a teacher and a student of poetry, and she is someone who is able to grow and learn along with the class. Anna is calmly in control, showing her ability to conduct discussion, stay on topic, and engage with poetry.
The brief writing exercises were very insightful, more of those would be great.
Anna is truly wonderful – she is very knowledgeable about poetry, especially for someone who is still studying as an MFA student. I have found that she prioritizes our class and responds to our workshops and discussions with maturity and wisdom. She has made the process of the annotated bibliography straightforward and inspiring – I found this to be true in our 1 to 1 conferences. Similarly, I think she encourages important discussions about poetry – what is poetry’s role? what should it accomplish and what are the moral implications of the poetic choices we make?
Best poetry instructor I could have asked for!
Anna is amazing and a gentle teacher who knows her students strengths and weaknesses well. She’s been an amazing asset to me all year, and I feel like I can go to her for anything poetry related in my life.
The instructor does an excellent job facilitating workshops and class discussions. She really seems to care for her students.
The Kidd was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my short time as a creative writing student. It’s absolutely been challenging, but in the best way possible.
The sound bath and writing session with Erica and Anna was bliss. As a chronic over thinker and having had the summer away from writing and self-care with being busy with mum life, the session was ideal. It allowed me to reconnect with myself as the sound bath helped quiet the business of my mind and connect me back to the present moment, my body and myself. It was a wonderful way to ease back into writing and refocus on the here and now and be with the others in the session. I recommend to anyone interested in writing, sound baths and unlocking creativity or wanting to reconnect to themselves and others. (Chantelle)