After over half a semester of writing and editing the poetry of a small class of students were culminated into a short anthology titled “Kingfisher.”
Alison Pelegrin’s English 371 class not only got the opportunity to have one of their poems published, but perform it at a poetry reading on April 10 in the Southeastern Writing Center in D Vickers 383.
“You could consider it a little, short book; each student in the class has a poem in it and they’ll all be reading their poem today,” said Pelegrin before the reading.  “We write a poem every week.  We always start with a prompt or some sort of inspiration and the way they can interpret that can vary, but they all kind of come from the same seed and we end with a lot of different plants.”
In the class, students write at least one poem every week and got to pick their best to put in the publication.  The poems varied greatly and they spoke of topics including love, mythology and even cellphones.
“I’m a big Greek mythology fan so I pulled that in on this exercise,” said Kaitlyn Seiler, senior English major.  “The theme basically of my poem is about self discovery.  You have someone that picks themselves up towards the end of the poem and realizes she’s not mortal, she’s a goddess.”
Students each took their prompt and way of writing their poem very differently.  The process of writing for some students came with instant ideas and enjoyment.
“It was just fun to do,” said Abby McGee, junior English major.  “I wrote it in like five minutes, I was like ‘this is fantastic!’  It was one of the easier ones to do. I’m totally excited about getting it published. I love having my stuff out there;  I’m a poetry person. You can sing to it, dance to it. It’s what I do.”
While some students had an easy time with composing their poetry it was not so for others in the class.  However, this group found that after a little practice and guidance they too could compose a strong poem.
“I don’t think I would have been able to write the poem that I wrote without the exercise that Mrs. Pelegrin provided because I’m actually a fiction writer,” said Seiler.  “So without the exercise and the guidance that Mrs. Pelegrin gave us, I don’t know that I could have written a poem.  I didn’t think myself as someone who could write poetry so with her help I surprised myself and now I have a poem in this book, so I’m really happy about that.”
Kingfisher is the first book and poetry reading the English 371 class had.  After struggles coordinating the event, Pelegrin finally made it happen with the permission and assistance of Dr. David Hanson, department head of English.
Pelegrin has hopes to publish another book of poems in her future classes, if she can get the funds. But for now, she’s enjoying the success of this semester’s class.
“I’m thrilled,” said Pelegrin.  “I’m really proud of the work.  I’m really proud of the strength of the work.”