Clicking on the link below will direct you to a piece of poetry I was required to write in Humanities, to highlight the difficulties and hardships of the Arctic. I chose this assignment because I feel that it has been the most creative thing I have worked on so far this year and fits well with the point of this reflection.

Arctic Poetry

Identify

I did not know very much about the Arctic going into this assignment, which is partially why I chose it as my physiographic region. I started by gathering information from credible sources, highlighting both the positive and negative attributes of the Arctic so that I could compare and contrast. I knew that it would be difficult to portray factual evidence through poetry, so I decided to take a creative route and convey the information through a narrative. Specifically, I wrote the poetry about the people living in the Arctic, particularly a (fictional) family that was wiped out by the cold. See the link above for an example of my work.

Inspire

By the time the first person in my class presented their work, I had not even started my poetry, as I was struggling to write about my findings in factual, yet creative form. However, she was the only person aside from me who wrote a narrative piece; this is where I was inspired to take the same route, as her work was very emotional. There was also a second classmate who used very descriptive, even flowery language to describe the Arctic and it had a much greater effect than I expected it to. I truly feel that my work would have been more dull had I presented near the start, because listening to others had such an effect on me, and not just the two I mentioned; everyone inspired me in their own way, because they all had such different and uniquely beautiful tactics.

(Inspirational Quote)

Interpolate

This step was easier for me, as I had already taken inspiration from the friends in my class. Both of their pieces were very different; hers was very long, and his was brief. What they both had in common however, was the fact that they used complex language to describe their regions; they had clearly taken a lot of time to portray what they were feeling, and how they felt we should be feeling. In terms of my length, I decided to not follow either of their examples, as that was one area that I thought I could improve on. I made my poetry shorter than hers, but longer than his and managed to find adequate middle ground.

Imagine

Here was when I began to write my work. I used to the research I had carefully gathered (see below for primary points of interest) and the inspiration I had taken from my classmates to create a blend of artistry and evidence. Once I began writing, it was difficult to wrap up the narrative in the time I had anticipated and it ended up being quite long, exceeding a thousand words before it was finished. I do no regret this however, as that was what it took to include everything I had worked for thus far, including the evidence, my friends’ examples and my own imagination.

Arctic Research

Inspect

Once I had my completed assignment, I did realize that I had taken things in quite a unique direction. A part of me was wondering if I had gone too far off of what my teacher was asking for, but I knew she encouraged creativity in the classroom, even if she was looking for a factual poem. While there were differences between my own work on the criteria that I could see, it did not end up hurting my mark. Both my classmates and my teacher loved listening to my work, and I knew that I had done the right thing. It was a gamble, but it paid off in the end. Below you will find the PowerPoint that I created to go along with my work. It was exactly what was expected of me, even if my poetry was very different.

Arctic Poetry Presentation