A Creative Interpretation of Ana Ristović’s Poem in the Classroom

Tijana DP Year 12 student recently demonstrated how contemporary poetry can spark powerful creativity. Inspired by Ana Ristović’s poem “Telo” (“Body”), the student chose to respond not only through analysis, but through a visual artwork: she drew a human body, coloured the internal organs, and paired each organ with the corresponding line from the poem.

The result is a piece that resembles a blend of an anatomical atlas and poetic imagination — a kind of poetic anatomical map, revealing the metaphors, symbols, and emotions woven into Ristović’s verses.

Ana Ristović’s poetry, known for its vivid imagery and physical metaphors, proved to be an ideal text for this type of interpretation. Organs that “speak,” a heart “the size of a baby’s fist,” “intestines like sailors’ ropes,” and a brain engaged in everyday observations — all of these invited the student to open the poem up, quite literally, and transform it into an image.

This work illustrates how rich contemporary teaching can be when literature, visual arts, and science intersect. While analysing the poem, the student simultaneously explored anatomy, selected colours, shaped forms, and built her own relationship with the text.

Experiences like this remind us that poetry is most alive when a student finds space within it to create something new — when a text becomes inspiration, and learning becomes personal.