How can a student learn to shed a fear if they’re not properly informed of the available resources?

Enter the Cerritos College Readings in Poetry class and the seeming lack of student knowledge in its existence.

“I think not enough students are aware that the class is offered, which is unfortunate because the class is a great learning experience. I myself didn’t know the class was available until it was recommended to me by someone else,” Maria Antuñez, English major said.

Dr. Steve Clifford, English professor at Cerritos College echoed this sentiment.

“No, I don’t think students know about it. When you open up the college schedule, there’s so much there on any given semester that it’s hard to figure out what you might want to take. We try to publicize [the classes] within the English department, but that only gets out to a minimal number of students,” Clifford said.

“A lot of it now is word of mouth,” Clifford continued.

A possible solution for increased poetry class notoriety may lie in social media.

“We need some kind of an online presence that is linked to social media that allows students to be able to explore based on certain interests they have, certain attributes, certain things they are good at, certain things they know they want to accomplish that would allow them to enter searches and then find some interactive material through video, through audio, with people they can talk to, with description of courses, times they’re offered and be able to build a virtual schedule for themselves,” said the English professor.

Readings in Poetry is a Cal-State and UC transferable class that also serves as a humanities requirement for many GE plans.

“Primarily, this is a course that helps students understand […] why read poetry at all? What is it that we gain from poetry and how do we begin to understand what poetry does? We look at the structure and form of poetry, how do we write poems, how do poets write poems,” Clifford said.

He stresses that not a great deal of poetry writing happens in this class. “That would freak some of them out,” the English professor added.

Why take a poetry class?

Antuñez said, “I think it’s a great way to promote literacy. Poetry allows us to create sketches of our lives through imagery, symbolic language and metaphors.”

She added, “Poetry gives a little more freedom than the average English classes, because it allows you to break the rules and express yourself more freely than an essay with a word count. Poetry is also an amazing way to build emotional resilience, it helps us adapt to stressful situations or crisis.”

“A poetry class offers students an opportunity to understand what we often assume are very individual experiences in a much more universal way,” Clifford said.

He shared that “[The course] would give students all kinds of options that they don’t understand that they have to explore the creative side of their brains even as the other half of their brains are doing more rigorous calculating that they do in other disciplines.

“It is something that [students] might want to try out even if they hated their junior high school English teacher or [are] scared to death of poetry, that this course offers a whole different approach.”

As put by Robert Frost, “Poetry is a momentary stay against confusion.”