Cora Kilgo

I used two of my favorite readings from this year; We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families and Being Peace. This inspired me because during a genocide you are going through so many things. So many mixed emotions with your family dying and your villages burning. I have never been through anything like this before. After something as intense as this happens, you need to be able to keep living in the moment. Yes it will be very hard because you wont forget the past but you need to find a new road to follow. You and me have to find that place where we are living in the moment but we cant completely escape the past. This is a good reminder for people who have had a rough start, or a rough past, it is a reminder that yes, you can start over and make better decisions even though you have those memories to live with.

As an influence I wanted to use a poem because I knew that would be a challenge for me. I have never enjoyed poetry as much as I do now and it is a great feeling! Reading poetry gives you a new image of whatever you are looking at and it makes you feel accomplished once you have broken it down. I knew for my poem I wanted to have a lot of imagery and different words to create different senses which are; sound, touch and image. A poem we focused on for a while was, Dulce Et Decorum Est. This means it is sweet and right. This poem is about war, and soldiers in war. The author, Wilfred Owen, uses so many great words to create such images in your head of the dreadful, lagging ideas of war.
“Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; but someone still was yelling out and stumbling, and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime… dim, through the misty panes and thick green light.”
When you read that you imagine a group of soldiers jumping out of being scared to death with gas oozing everywhere creating a deathly fog. This was an inspiration because I want for the readers to be very impressed and feel like they are there and can feel, see and hear what is going on.

For the past month and a half our starters to the class have been focused on poetry with all different kinds of performances. I would have to say that my favorite ones were the ones with the kinetic text. Kinetic text is where words in poems are emphasized and acted out to what they mean. I knew that I didn’t want to use kinetic text because I do not enjoy using computers or really even getting to know them but I love how much emphasis all of these poems had. One of the starters we did was called ‘Direct Orders.’ It was about a lot of different things but mostly how you need to spend your life living like it is your last day! Live life to the fullest and don’t take anything for advantage. During this poem, Anis Modjgani, uses such umph and shows such passion when he is speaking each word. When people see my project and hear me say it, I want them to know that I put a lot of hard work in and that it came straight from the heart.