Panel: "Mini Sagas: My Creative Process"

Last Tuesday, the English Department of the College of General Studies of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus presented a conference titled: “Students Interventions in General Studies: Interdisciplinary Projects and Creative Initiatives”. This conference consisted in the participation of students –currently enrolled in English courses– presenting their writing projects to an audience. One of the panels was named “Mini Sagas: My Creative Process”, which was formed by students from the PSAE program supervised by Dr. Mildred Lockwood. 

This panel exposed a very creative and stimulating concept called “mini sagas”, which was invented by Brian Aldiss, and is basically a short poem made by a maximum of 50 words. These mini sagas contain a well elaborated topic or conflict, therefore, most of the students from the panel talked about their personal experiences. The topics presented were related to bulimia, racism, religion, expectations of finding a husband, and ecology. Some poems were very tragic and touching, and others were extremely hilarious; however, they were all limited to 50 words or less. 

These mini sagas were very impressive, especially because students are limited to put across a complicated and meaningful topic in a short amount of words. Although these poems appear very vague and simple at first, everyone was surprised when each student explained the true meaning of their mini saga. I genuinely think that writing with alternative methods such as mini sagas is very clever, mainly because you take a different approach toward a specific issue, which makes it entertaining and unconventional.