Coldwater, the school literary magazine, decided to get a little chaotic with their poetry. In the middle of January, club advisor Michael Peri decided to shift to anarcho-poetics, a form of poetry that has loose restrictions.

“The ‘anarcho’ part of anarcho-poetics comes from the word ‘anarchy’ which means without rules,”  Peri further explained. This unit was a bit more flexible, due to the form’s scarcity of conforming regulations. He provided exercises for the club members, such as pairing up with a partner and alternating lines of the poem with that specific partner. Another exercise was to have students open books to random pages, grab the first words that appeared, use them for their poems’ titles, and write down everything it reminded them of. He hoped that the exercises would provide a fun experience for the club members.

Interestingly enough, the guidelines, the “Exercises in Anarcho-Poetics”, came from an NVOT graduate, Emily O’Neil. O’Neil has published many poems and talks about poetry in her blog where she said that she created the exercises in order to spark a “lukewarm state of interest” among students.

Peri has more new plans for the literary magazine to try out, whether they may work or not. To Peri, a poem is “a written or spoken expression that delights someone” through emotions.”