About

This is a poetry creation tool made for Dr. Kirsten Ortega's ENGL 3410 class, Poetry for the People, at UCCS.

This semester-long project, called "Poetry Matters," prompted my class to engage others with and through poetry: to help others have a poetry experience that demonstrates or develops how and why poetry matters. In other words, this project is how we applied the principles of "Poetry for the People." The hypothesis is that we will learn something by engaging with others through poetry. The goal of the project we submit, therefore, is to demonstrate what we learned when we created a poetry experience for others. It will, simultaneously, serve as a culmination of our understanding of what it means to be a Poet for the People.

I chose to create this tool (with the help of my amazing computer science-y partner, Trey) for my project because I wanted to show people how effective constraints can be for inspiring you and challenging you as a poet - but you can hear more about that in the "Why" page.

If you're interested in giving us feedback, offering prompt/constraint/etc. suggestions, becoming a tester for new content, or just talking about poetry, feel free to fill out this survey or reach out to me at skustar@uccs.edu . If there's a problem with the tool itself, please also let us know so we can get it fixed.

Happy writing!