Autobiography
Christie Valentin-Bati
August 19, 2022
Using the work of poet Yusef Komunyakaa for inspiration, students will write a poem that tells it all.
Source Material:
Pre-writing:
For our warm-up, I want you to answer the question: who is my alter ego and why? This can be a real person, a person you made up, or even an animal like “my cat.”
Give yourself five to ten minutes for this warm-up. It’s low stakes – just get your brains thinking and your pens moving.
Prompt: Write a poem that begins with this: “I told you, if you start me talking, I’ll tell everything I know…” As a challenge, try to push yourself to write your poem using the same split or waterfall form as Komunyakaa.
Christie Valentin-Bati
Christie Valentin-Bati (she/her) is a poetry MFA candidate and instructor at Columbia College Chicago. She considers herself a multi-genre artist working through writing and photographic mediums. Her work dives into the quotidian, the body, experimentation with hybridity and visual elements of text, and understanding “the uncanny.”