Drafty-Poem

Writing Reflection: Overall, I really enjoyed creating this poem using this format, I think it forced me to step outside of my comfort zone when it comes to writing and try something new. The approach I took with this exercise was that I started off with just a couple sentences that expressed the overall idea of the poem, and each day I gradually added more and more lines. I also slowly edited the poem each day by adding punctuation, fixing the wording in previous lines, and adding a title until I eventually came up with the final product on the last page. This project was definitely a challenge for me because I am someone who likes to edit as I go, so it took everything in me to not constantly erase things and just allow my ideas to flow. It was also difficult to stop myself from adding more lines in one day and telling myself I have to stop and come back to it. Even though it was a challenge for me, I think that this writing method was really helpful because it forced me to not be such a perfectionist with my work. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s okay to make errors and it was actually interesting to go back and see how my poem evolved over the course of a week. I’m happy with how my final poem turned out and I will likely be using this method in the future whether it be with more poems or other writing assignments like essays.
Bookmaking Reflection: The bookmaking process of this project was also a challenge for me. I don’t consider myself to be someone who is very artistic, so I had to step outside of my comfort zone when creating this aspect of the project as well. The first thing I did was make the cover and back cover. I knew I wanted to have some sort of 3D element in my book because that’s what really stood out to me in other peoples artists books, so I decided to create a side profile of someone with distorted pieces of paper coming out of their head. The pieces of paper come off of the page and represent the millions of things I feel like I am constantly thinking about, which is the whole theme of the poem. On the back cover there is just a regular side profile of a person, which contrasts the image on the front. I decided on this image for the back cover because I feel like it represents how I felt after writing this poem and getting all of the feelings of being stressed and overwhelmed out on the pages. Like I said before, this project kind of forced me to just let my thoughts flow, which I feel is represented by the front and back cover. I also decided to add doodles throughout the book which had to do with the ideas and feelings expressed on each page.

Overwhelmed

Today I didn’t want

to get out of bed.

I had to force myself up

and on with my day.

I need to catch my breath

but never have the time

now everything’s changing,

everything feels off.

I’ll tell myself that,

“I just need to get through this week.”

Only to say the same thing next monday