Abstract
This paper documents storytelling as a generative literacy process that two professors experienced in a summer poetry course. Each was to tell the other a story about their life, and then craft a poem that captured the story they were each told. We argue that this process of generating narrative that led to poetry, song and video, has practical applications for student learning at all levels and functions as a series of performative acts. Because of the decisions
involved in choosing a story about the self and, thus, one’s identity, the student becomes aware of performativity; the listener’s need to create a response that resonates with that performative choice, the acts of listening and of converting one art form to another engages empathy and promotes creativity that our students as well as ourselves can use for self-expression, communication with others, and reflexivity about the performativity of identity.