Nick Clark: Warrior Poet
My two favorite classes that I’ve taken at Concordia, hands down, were both poetry writing courses taught by Prof. William Snyder. When I was a sophomore, I was in the Intro to Poetry Writing course. For the first few weeks of the course, Prof. Snyder (who insists on being called Bill) had us all read professional work and look closely at what separates great poetry from not-so-great poetry. We all practiced with in-class writing exercises until we were comfortable writing full poems on our own. Bill is a great teacher and poet, and has published dozens of poems in a number of journals. He was a great resource, and it was great to have him write new material right along with us. One thing that made this class so rewarding, though, was that the Intro class was combined with the Advanced Poetry Writing class. That means that of the 14 students in the room, about 6 were taking this course a second time. So whenever we workshopped my poems in class, I always received great advice from Bill and the upper level students. They had been in my position before, and they knew exactly how to help improve my pieces without disrupting my poetic voice. It was a great growing experience for my writing. As the semester went on, we got to be a really close group. Towards the end of the course, we would all go out to lunch immediately after class and just hang out. I’ve never laughed so hard in a class or looked forward to going to class more. This past semester, I got to be one of the 3 students in the Advanced Poetry group. I really enjoyed taking on a leadership role and giving the same encouragement that I received the year before. My writing improved tremendously, and I formed some more meaningful friendships through the class. The class ended at the end of Fall term, and sadly, there are no more available Poetry courses out there. But I didn’t have to retire my poetry pens yet. Bill invited me and two other students in the class to form the Concordia Poetry Club. We meet once a week and share new poems with one another. Bill brings in his work too, and is helping the three of us send our pieces out for publishing!!! As a writer, there is nothing more exciting.