ENG 3580-102: ePortfolio - Nicolette Lovell

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Introduction: Two Voice Poetry Book

I began my multimodal project with the idea of creating a two voice poetry book with illustrations and a recorded CD of each poem being read. I was soon after introduced to the myebook site and decided to make the book completely digital. I began my first drafts jotting down poems that stemmed from some of the things that I wrote down when I created the cover for my daybook featuring the “one hundred things that I love”. From these many things, I decided to go with a nature theme for my book and chose butterflies, flowers, trees, raindrops, and snowflakes to be the subjects of the five poems that I would write. The first drafts are not as long and polished as my final drafts, but they were a necessary starting point that allowed me to get my creative ideas flowing. I went on to my second draft, improving and lengthening each poem. The first and second draft experiences were surprisingly simple for me, as I progressed with the poems, they became easier and easier to create. I originally expected to deal with extreme writer’s block during the composition process. After my second drafts were completed, I created a myebook account and got started. The website was a little tricky at first, but after I became more familiar with the ebook builder tools, I was able to create the book very easily. I incorporated images from the web to serve as water color backgrounds on each page. I also recorded each poem with my sister. Each audio file created was uploaded onto the ebook site and placed on each page. The final draft was a true success and is a project of which I am very proud. The genre that I chose for this project was poetry, but I decided to focus on a subgenre of poetry – two voice poetry. This subgenre of poetry is characterized by poems written in two columns, some of the words in each column are meant to be spoken simultaneously, and others are meant to be read alone. The poems are characterized by a song-like rhythm and must be practiced to be read properly.