the workshop chronicles preface

my 29th poetry album is a bit different than some of my other ones. i call this one "the workshop chronicles." in a way, this is more of a b-sides project, and this album is comprised of poems that i wrote during my poetry workshop class in my senior year of college. i had intentions of releasing these poems at some point, but just never got around to it until now. so, here they are, intact in the state they were in at the end of the semester. that said, i did make a few changes to fit my aesthetic (our professor hated when we typed in all lowercase, but now, i have the freedom to do that). even though i don't like to say much about the poems in these prefaces, i will actually provide some context for each one. as they were all written as part of assignments, i'll give some insight as to the assignment each poem was attached to:

1. how to tame a monster - for this assignment, we had to write a poem based on one of the works from kayo chingonyi's poetry book "kumukanda." mine was based on the poem "guide to proper mixtape assembly."

2. cleaning my memories - with this, we had to write a poem about an odd job.

3. ride - the stipulation with this was to write a poem about a public place. 

4. illusion, part 1 - technically, the three parts of this poem were all one long piece, but i decided to cut it into three individual poems for this album. basically, we had to focus on voice with this, writing the same poem, but from the perspective of three different characters. this was the perspective of one character.

5. sportsball ring - here, we had to focus in on a specific heirloom.

6. illusion, part 2 - part 2 of the aforementioned three-part poem.

7. days in macaroni - with this, we had to write a poem about a landscape/location unique to our area.

8. woodpecker - simply, we had to write a poem about an animal, zeroing in on its lore and character traits, and implementing that into a story.

9. illusion, part 3 - the third and final part of the aforementioned three-part poem.

10. lonesome - finally, we had to write a poem where we created a character.