Tag: Zai Deriu

Poetry With Angie Sijun Lou by Zai Deriu

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Our first Creative Writing 2 unit of the year has come to a close. In Creative Writing, we are either taught in one large class with all four grades, or split in two, with freshmen and sophomores in CW1, and juniors and seniors in CW2. This is the first year for my grade, the class of ’22, to be a part of Creative Writing 2. Rather than being taught by Heather, our lovely department head, we are taught by fellows artists. In normal classes, this would typically mean working in the annex of the CW room, but now, it means a separate zoom meeting.

This past unit was poetry, taught by Angie Sijun Lou. Despite all the current difficulties of maintaining a successful class online, Angie has been a wonderful teacher for these past seven weeks. We would typically read a few pieces of poetry, discuss them, and then spend the rest of our time on a writing exercise. Other days, we would workshop each other’s poetry, offering compliments and criticism. By the end of her unit, I feel sad to see Angie go. Being stuck at home and doing school online makes it difficult to feel motivated, and without leaving the house, it is easy to feel as though the days mush into one another. The structure of CW during Angie’s unit helped remedy that for me. 

Being taught in a small group with the class of ’21 again for the first time since my freshman year feels quite nice. With the smaller group, class feels more intimate and community-based. I feel close with my own grade, and I think we and the class of ’21 work well together. Moreover, after two years of being taught by Heather in CW1, it’s nice to feel as though I have graduated to my next stage of writing, so to speak. Still, I am excited to go back into the larger group in the coming week and help CW1 with their poetry workshops.

Zai Deriu (Class of ’22)

The Beginning of Playwriting by Zai Deriu

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Still at the start of our playwriting unit, it easily shows how little I know about writing for the stage. Poetry and fiction I had experience reading and writing, so went into those units with some prior knowledge.

Playwriting, on the other hand, is a completely new experience. At the unit’s start, we began discussing dialogue. Even in fiction, I avoid dialogue. There’s no real reason for this, only that I’m not so comfortable with it as with other things. In more ways than one, I was (and still am, to a certain extent) out of my comfort zone.

Over the past  weeks of playwriting, I’ve learned more about playwriting (and dialogue) than I knew there was to learn. It’s been crazy to be taught an entirely new topic, especially after being so immersed in our past fiction unit.

I’ve also had to start thinking about the topic of my play. Technically speaking, it won’t be my first, as I attempted a play for my SOTA portfolio, but it will be my first with any real instruction. Looking back on that play, I now know I formatted it entirely wrong, and can see it lacks any sort of real plot. I’m here, though, so it must have been alright.

In trying to choose topics for various prompts, I found myself thinking of what makes something for the stage rather than the page, which we discussed in class. Should I throw myself into dialogue completely, and embrace my lack of knowing what to do? Should I think of past experiences in my life for inspiration before anything else? It’s difficult to think of ideas when you have to.

Perhaps it’s because of how extensively we spoke of plot during fiction, but I do think it’s getting easier for me to pull out story ideas when asked. Not to say it’s easy, however. I can confidently say that I’ve become more comfortable in my writing in my past seven months in CW. It’s because of this I’m not all that scared to be starting our playwriting unit. If I had been thrown into playwriting at the year’s start, I would have been lost and confused, but now I know I’ll be alright.

Being more confident in my own writing than I was at the beginning of the year is great, and I already know that this will help me through every english-based class I ever have, but perhaps more important than that is the friendships I’ve formed with other creative writers. From the beginning of the year, myself and the other CW freshmen have gotten along incredibly well. Without that sense of community, I don’t know how I possibly could have gotten through the first few months of school and even made it this far. Fortunately, I had their support, so now I’m here, and I’m very happy about it.

Zai Deriu, class of 2022

Sophomore Poetry Lessons by Zai Deriu

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During our poetry unit, Creative Writing One spent some time being taught by the sophomores, each of whom had planned and then taught a lesson on poetry surrounding their culture and background. As each of the ten sophomores taught their lessons, the class felt almost purely student directed for a time, as Heather sat watching the lessons progress.

Every person taught a distinctly different lesson, ranging from poetry from Berkeley, to Canadian songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, to British grime rap. Every day a new topic was introduced and some new bit of information about a person and a culture was learned. In some lessons, class discussions continued into break time without anyone noticing, all so interested and eager to contribute.

The lessons required us to write a poem a night as homework. It helped me to explore new literary devices and topics by responding to various poets or styles. Some nights it was more difficult than others, when writer’s block became a large issue, but being forced to push through that and still turning in all my assignments on time made it easier to process my thoughts into poems despite obstacles.

Not only did responding to poetry creatively help to expand my own writing, but simply hearing different poet’s work made me think of all the different ways one may present their art. I had never particularly considered what exactly makes something a poem, and I still wouldn’t attempt to define one, however in quite a few lessons, music was used in collaboration with poetry. Playing music and my writing have always been things which were separate to me, but hearing and reading the range of styles made me curious to incorporate my music into my writing.

Seeing each of the sophomores present their carefully prepared lessons to the class made me think about how in a year, I and the rest of the freshmen class will have to do the same. I began to consider what aspects of my culture I might want to study and teach. I could pull from the Italian side of my family, and research poets from the area where my father was born. Perhaps I would consider researching poetry by LGBTQ+ people, having grown up with gay parents in the Castro, where the streets literally have rainbows on them. It made me excited to share an aspect of my background with next year’s Creative Writing One.

Zai Deriu, class of 2022