Course:Southern Protestant Church
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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| Important Course Pages |
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My grandparents went to church together, my parents met there as teenagers, and as a child, I spent many mornings, afternoons, and evenings there. The Sunday worship program was similarly structured each week: a rotation of scripture, liturgy, hymns, and a sermon. Every pastor had a similar Southern Methodist rolling cadence to their voice that put a stone on the weight of pauses and told you something was important by how much the words sat. a. part; how deep they sank with a quivering whisper. Liturgy and hymns consisted of repeition and call-and-response to draw out emotional involvement and affirmation of faith. In everything, there was a preoccupation with expressing fervency. My favorite part was the Benediction at the end, because it told me I was about to be free; it was the pastor bridging the worship experienced in the little box of church out into the full world; it ended with a direct address, a mission. It felt like the countdown to liftoff.
I draft my poems by following a rolling cadence and seeing where it takes me. This helps the process flow organically and melodically, but can lead to content tangents. I use repetition, silence, and slowness as tools of emphasis. I use direct address and questions to engage the reader, in the vein of a sermon or call-and-response that challenges the listener to reflection or action. I have directly utilized my church influence in my public poetic rituals that queer religious ritualmaking, thereby directly addressing the constraining homophobia of most churches. My stanzas in these rituals reflect church liturgy in their structural repetition and call-and-response format. I often end with a Benediction that moves the piece into the reader’s reality and future; in one piece, I begin my Benediction with church words verbatim: “May you go forth…"