Miss Hodge’s Creative Writing Class and Writers’ Circle club took a trip to SIU Carbondale on April 7th.
The first stop was Morris Library – a readers’ paradise with thousands of books, a museum collection, and much more. In a library room called “Geospatial Resources,” students were able to see maps of Chester, Illinois. This included aerial shots and an image of what the surrounding county area would look like if they had built a dam in the Mississippi. They also explained that there were hundreds of maps they had collected, and not all were in the database because of the sheer numbers. For this reason, they had an inbox drawer that had hundreds of index cards for any map you would look for.
At SIU, students visited the Sharpe Museum at Faner Hall. This museum was named after Chester High School alum Professor James Franklin Sharpe. The museum included work from numerous artists, both local and international, including Andy Warhol and Salvadore Dali.
Then, students attended a poetry workshop with Professor and published poet, Allison Joseph. In the workshop, Professor Joseph gave a brief lecture on ekphrasis, analyzed an example, and directed students to write their own ekphrasis poems inspired by something they see in the museum.
The tour ended at the Center for Virtual Expression (CVeX). Students interacted with a group of SIUC-undergraduates and educators who use AI as a responsible tool and teach others to do the same. According to Rachel Wolters, PhD, “many of our current undergraduate and graduate students in Creative Writing have classes in the space, work there, and complete projects utilizing their technology. A main focus of the Center is to envision storytelling through visual modalities utilizing AI, VR, and AR.”
Students even had the luck to run in to some former CHS graduates, who just happened to be walking by or working that day!
