creative writing final assignment

November 10, 2025

The Verse Beyond the Office Walls

When Mr. Keating asked, “What will your verse be?” Compare and contrast - the question rang louder than any lecture I had ever heard (Carl Niblock 5:27). I was in a small, windowless office, half-listening to the hum of fluorescent lights and the clacking of keyboards. My verse, I thought, would be cloaked and obscured in spreadsheets, emails, deadlines, and polite professional smiling. Yet, something in his voice had stirred old demons of restlessness in my mind that I'd never given in to before, back in my childhood.

I grew up in a family, and I adopted the mentality that creativity was a hobby, rather than something pursued. My parents were both engineers, and they believed in measurable things. I used to write stories in the margins of my math homework, and only hear the same sigh my mother would make when she told me that was nice, but focus on something practical. Slowly, I learned to file away imaginations like unused apps - they are still there, but unopened.

Now, as I come to adulthood, working in the corporate communications field, creativity finds its way into my life in surprising ways. When I tried to be creative, I knew I was doing what poets do - trying to move people with words. Still, the environment itself is prone to sterility. There are meetings about innovation that often revolve around the same tired ideas. Mr. Keating would say "laying pipe" instead of living poetry.

However, after reading the article How to Foster Creativity in the Workplace by Katarina Betterton, I changed the way I approach my profession. It argues that creativity isn't a skill exclusive to artists, but rather an essential skill for everyone who wants to find solutions to problems and is willing to experiment with innovation. The article insists that when employees are encouraged to think freely, they become more adaptable and fulfilled (Betterton 1). It was reminiscent of what Mr. Keating tore out of Dr. J. Evans Pritchard's dull formula for "measuring" poetry.

I began to attempt to experiment quietly. Instead of using traditional meetings, I asked my team to "brainwrite" - for each member of the team to write down ideas while we share ideas aloud. The energy shifted. The quiet members spoke up. The "impossible" ideas turned out to be creative campaigns. For the first time, I saw what imagination could do to create efficiency, rather than work against it.

Another suggestion from the article was to practice meditation. In stillness, I noticed how ideas bubble up, like beggars - unkind, some strange, some brilliant. The silence reminded me of how poetry has a rhythm and that for creativity, there needs to be space for it to breathe. In these moments, I knew precisely what Mr. Keating was talking about when he said, "Poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for." He wasn't speaking to poets; he was talking to anyone trying to remain human in an obsessed state with productivity.

Looking back, I remember one time in high school when I entered a short story contest because no one had told me not to, and I didn't tell anyone about it. I didn't win, but it gave me a little flame ("You have a voice") by hand, which it signed the note and then carried around with me for some time afterwards. It took years, but that voice has taken on different forms - in the way I found myself writing business proposals from the heart and designing campaigns that tell stories.

If Mr. Keating were in my office today, I'd bet he'd get up on top of one of the desks and look around the cubicles, and say to them, "We read and write not because it's cute, but because we are members of the human race." And maybe he'd make a deal with our kind, a smile knowing just that even here, the unlikely likeliest of places, poetry survives - in the words we write, in the risks we take, and in the courage it takes to know something better.

So what will my verse be? It will sound like laughter in a boardroom, madness in sparking and whirling in tired brains, or like color being allowed through the grey edges of a spreadsheet. My verse will be a reminder that creativity belongs to none of us poets, but rather belongs to everyone at once who is brave enough for the imagination to believe that even in the most commonplace of spaces will have its place.

Works Cited

Betterton, Katarina. How to Foster Creativity in the Workplace. U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 19 May 2023, www.uschamber.com/co/grow/thrive/why-creativity-in-the-workplace-is-so-important

Carl Niblock. Dead Poets Society - ‘Rip It Out’ Scene. YouTube, Video, 23 June 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x0COtH4Vrw