Maria Baluch Journal Staff
If you are a lover of poetry, look no further than Suffolk’s new club, the Poetry Circle.
Founder and President, Domenic Scopa, came up with the idea for a Poetry Circle club in a meeting he had with Professor Fred Marchant, who runs the creative writing program. Marchant suggested Scopa should start an organization specifically for poetry and Scopa went along with the idea.
Scopa, a junior and philosophy major, writes poetry himself and plans on going to graduate school for it.
The idea behind Poetry Circle is “basically to have an unofficial poetry workshop,” says Scopa. Poetry workshops are classes offered once a week where students write a poem per class and are given a deadline. The poems are handed back to the student with corrections made by the professor.
Because there are already classes where students can do poetry critiques and work on their craft, Scopa and Kayla Cash, vice president, wanted to keep the Poetry Circle casual but still have a workshop environment. They wanted something informal where students would not have these restrictions. Their poems would reflect workshop material but would not be graded or on deadline.
Although the organization hasn’t had their first meeting yet, there has been discussion on how to construct the weekly meetings. Scopa and Cash are hoping that during each meeting students will come with a poem they have been working on and read it out loud to the other members and who would then provide feedback. There would also be discussion of the influence behind the poetry to see if the poem captured what the writer was aiming for, but only at the comfort of the writer.
The organization isn’t necessarily in preparation for the workshop classes but rather the informality of it.
“Poetry Circle gives people a chance to workshop their poetry before they make the commitment to take a class devoted to poetry workshop and gives them a foundation for it as well,” says Scopa.
The organization will be going to poetry readings or having distinguished people visit at school. Scopa says there a couple of poets at Suffolk who are distinguished scholars themselves.
Scopa hopes that the Poetry Circle will help people grow as poets without being oppressive. Also, he hopes that people won’t be afraid of sharing their poetry because what hinders many people from doing so is the fear of being ridiculed or recieving opinions from others in general.
“I hope we can provide a comfortable environment for that expression,” says Scopa.
Though there hasn’t been any public outreach yet, Scopa has been spreading the word of the organization to his friends who enjoy poetry and with a little help from Professor Marchant, who has been telling the students of his poetry workshop classes.
The organization at the moment consists of Scopa, Cash and three other students. If any students would like to join, weekly meetings will be held at the conference room in the Writing Center on Mondays from 5 to 6 p.m.
