Undergraduate / Experience that has been a strong influence on your goals - Essay no.2 [4]

hi, it's livia again!
this is my second essay, please take a look at it as well, i need your advice.
thank you so much,
all the best!

Essay 2:

Describe an experience that has been a strong influence on the goals you have set yourself.

Motto: "Poetry is not the written text, nor the interpretation of the text, but the effect of the text upon the reader" (Adrian Urmanov)

On Monday, at 17.00 o'clock, my city can hardly bear the noise of the cars, the thrill of people, this accidental meeting of metal and flesh bodies on the streets. But every Monday at 17.00 o'clock, between January 2006 and February 2007, I have had a city of my own, inhabited by a vivid group of six people and the world/space that I have reached in that time was the one of poetry, films, music and tea. For the last year I have been a member of an unconventional literary circle, called "Alive Poetry". It has been a place that enriched me both as a future/potential poet and as a person.

It is strange and beautiful at the same time, when thinking that the name of this poetry workshop can be both translated as "Poetry in Life" and "Alive Poetry" and it is this vividness of mind occurring from poetry writing until now that, for me, is ineffable. It has been a year in which we met every week, we wrote and read poetry, we have seen films and talked about them. We have also shared our visions about what poetry can take from other arts and fields of study in order to bring people face to face with essential things about themselves and about the space that they inhabit every day. This particular need of people to find something about themselves and the need to belong to something is what we mainly discussed about.

Within our literary workshop, "Alive Poetry", we have tried to bring poetry closer to people, through public readings from both famous poets and our own lyrics, during the book fairs. We have also specially brought to "Bookfest" (book fair) ordinary plastic glasses with tea and some other objects but we transformed them, we gave them a new identity, by writing lyrics on them. It was not much, yet enough to see that people are sometimes afraid of receiving messages personally addressed and also afraid of less usual communication means. Therefore, I understood that poetry should reach people without letting them know it does that, like advertisements do every day.

One of my goals is to set up a community of young artists from as many countries as possible that would be willing to devote their time to bring poetry in the centre of different installations and performances. I want to bring poetry into the public space using my knowledge from the field of advertising in that of art. Ever since I have learned about terms as "elevator advertising", "guerrilla advertising", "out of home advertising", I have been thinking of making a simple, yet adventurous substitution. That is how and why potential concepts like "elevator poetry", "guerrilla poetry", "out of home poetry" came about so naturally and inspired me to think of spaces inhabited firstly by poetry and afterwards by people.

This community of artists that I am having in mind would be called "e l e v a t o r" and would stand for the idea that people are in need of poetry but they can only be reached in-between "floors" of perception and dispositions of retrieving a message. Therefore, the urban landscapes would provide these multi - layered types of places.

It is for sure that my interest in poetry has been set since long ago, but this particular intention to "stick" it to people represents a project, an idea, a feeling that only because of "Alive Poetry" has started having a shape.

My long term goal deals with identifying and continuously refreshing the means through which art, but especially poetry, can reach people. I can do this in the field of cultural management, but mostly continuing to write and to research what poetry can, actually, give people.

Undergraduate / Stimulates me to question ; "Why ECLA?" [NEW]

Hello,
I would kindly ask for your help in revising some essays that I've written for applying to a college.

I must say that i am not native in English, so there might be problems with the word order or some expressions or any other mistakes. I really need your advice as soon as possible, please.

I am also not sure if I followed all the rulesof essay writing (like descriptive/argumentative etc.)

Where i wasn't sure of what word I should use, I wrote both variants with a slash between.

Hope to hear from you soon!
All the best,
Livia

Essay 1:

Why ECLA?

When Mark Twain wrote this sentence, "Don't let school interfere with your education", he probably did not imagine that, one day, there would be a place to contradict his idea. I do believe that ECLA is that place.

During all my years of studying, until now, I have been trying to make/set peace between my "self" that went to school and the other that wanted to read poetry, to learn to play an instrument, to learn origami, to watch films, to have unconventional conversations with intelligent people. Making small and patient steps was my method to become acquainted with different fields of studies that I was not offered the opportunity to approach in school. I became aware of the importance of assertiveness in learning and I have set myself some credos which are, I believe, a present meeting point between me and ECLA.

I trust the discomfort/uneasiness of questions. I do not trust the comfort of answers.
Therefore, ECLA can stimulate me to question all the matters that I have been sure of until now, in the sense of enriching the perspectives of my thoughts and sweeping off any traces of comforting cliche.

In fact, one of my most intimate thoughts is that beings, objects and things of this world can only communicate with each other when they are on the same frequency of sensibility. I felt this common frequency whenever I accessed ECLA site and I kept reading over and over again its generous curriculum with core and elective courses. I have also read the statements of former and present students, fact which reinforced my trust in this matter of sensitivity frequencies. With all the modesty, I consider that, during my education years, I have been preparing myself to become an ECLA student, even before knowing about this place.

I believe in commas and in points of ellipsis. I do not believe in full stops.

In ECLA I can learn about subjects that I do not have extensive knowledge of yet and also benefit of academic teaching in fields that I have mostly approached as an autodidact. These fields include music, poetry or film studies. I feel that, at ECLA, I could bring to life all my projects regarding poetry and origami installations. This constant preoccupation for aliveness has been guiding my life due to/because of a continuous struggle not to become the tamed child of an institution called school. For me, ECLA is both aliveness and generosity. The first because this place meets my expectations in which regards the curricula (and the student life approach) and the latter because of those people that benefited of a liberal education and thought of creating this opportunity for other young students all over the world.

I believe in the silence of hard work. I believe in the rustle of intellectual intuition.

All the descriptions on the site and of the courses led me to the conclusion that ECLA is a place that appreciates hard learning, but also encourages the intuitive skills of the individual, one's ability to mistrust books and citations, once in a while, and make his own empirical judgement. Once more, I am really willing to rediscover this ability that grows silent in formal education institutions. It is also my personal belief that creativity is only the top of hard studying, either in poetry, history or philosophy.

I trust the coherence of values. I trust the perpetual wandering of mind.

My strongest conviction is that ECLA represents the place where all my beliefs could meet and where my past experience can be bridged with my future endeavours. Nonetheless, I consider ECLA the place that can lead me to know/understand more about myself while understanding more about the others.