P&W–supported poet Michael Medrano will blog about the literary climate in California's underserved Central Valley throughout the month of July. Medrano is the author of Born in the Cavity of Sunsets (Bilingual Press 2009). His poems have appeared in Askew; Bombay Gin; The Cortland Review; The Packinghouse Review; Rattle; and The Yellow Medicine Review among other publications. He is the host of Pakatelas, a literary radio show, streaming worldwide at www.kfcf.org, and hosts the Random Writers Workshop in Fresno, California.

When Bakersfield author Nick Belardes approached me on starting a Fresno version of the Random Writers Workshop, In N’ Out Burger came to mind. Actually, I was quite honored when Nick approached me. Ironically, he asked me over burgers in some truckers diner off the 99 where I did a reading the night before. When I left home to come to Fresno I thought long and hard about the idea of being my own boss; the entrepreneurial spirit is not usually associated with poets who are rarely paid their worth, but the idea of contributing to my writer’s community by providing a service greatly appealed to me.

Back home I drafted a mini-business plan and sent it to Nick. A few tweaks through email and a side-order of sweet literary banter, (something about me running to catch a nearly departing train Nick found terribly funny), and I was ready to launch the Random Writers Workshop de Fresno!

Part of the plan was to keep the format accessible in order to attract more participants. So, I kept the cost of attending relatively low and opened the format to all levels of writing ability. I must admit, being open to beginners and veterans of craft, published even, scared me a bit. What if rookie poets felt intimidated by the master poets? What if master poets felt bored writing with the newbies? What if I sucked as a teacher and my writing exercises were about as popular as a veggie burger at Mickey D’s? What if, right? But here’s the deal: if all I had were what ifs, I wouldn’t have all those poems I wrote during the workshop (because I do participate in the writing exercises) under my arsenal. Yes, teaching workshop has not taken me away from my writing; in fact, it has even taken my current manuscript into directions I could not imagine!

But the Random Writers Workshop would not be possible without the students. Remember my anxiety about pairing rookies with veterans? Well, I have seen these new poets step up, in their own resilience, to become better writers. And my master poets, a couple who are recent and current MFA creative writing students, have grown to become models for the workshop.

Sure, some of the faces and their stanzas blur like rush hour during the travel season, but the students who have chosen to bear through the critique of their poems have shown a resiliency that begs for notice. During the past year, these Random Writers have written countless drafts, an occasional gem, even poems that are just not good. But this group here, they keep coming back. They’re developing their chops! Sure, their literary experience is about as diverse as a California menu, but they, without realizing it, are creating valuable writing habits that will stay with them for as long as they’ve got poems to write. Someday, who knows, maybe there will be workshop locations spread across the country: Welcome to Random Writers Workshop, may I take your order?

Photo: Michael Medrano.

Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Gregory Crosby blogs about Tom Sleigh's involvement in the City College of New York's Poetry Festival. Crosby is a poet and teacher, and coordinator of the City College of New York Poetry Outreach Center. He is co-editor of the poetry journal Lyre Lyre and co-curator of the long-running Earshot reading series.

This past May, The City College of New York’s (CCNY) Poetry Outreach Center presented its annual Poetry Festival on campus at Aaron Davis Hall, a remarkable event for a number of reasons: the impressive number of excited and delightful elementary, middle school, and high school students who read their winning poetry to a capacity crowd; the varied and talented faculty, MFA candidates, and local poets who participated with poems of their own; and the inspiring reading given by this year’s special guest poet, Tom Sleigh. This was the 41st day in a continuous series of festival events dedicated to poetry and public school students. Founded by poet and professor emeritus Barry Wallenstein, and now run by poet and lecturer Pamela L. Laskin, the CCNY Poetry Festival has grown over the decades from a small community outreach event focused on Harlem to a citywide program that sends poet mentors into schools from the Bronx to the Battery to Brooklyn.

“I was part of CUNY poetry affiliation group that Pam Laskin belonged to,” says Tom Sleigh, who teaches in Hunter College’s MFA program, “and every year Pam would tell us about Poetry Outreach and its work, so when she asked me to be the featured guest poet I was happy to say yes.” Sleigh has long understood and appreciated the importance of poetry mentoring in schools. “It was very familiar to me as I’ve always done this kind of thing, teaching poetry in schools of all kinds as a guest poet,” says Sleigh.

“What was particularly wonderful on the day of the festival was hearing so many students, many from disadvantaged economic backgrounds, read their poems,” Sleigh continues. “I think it’s essential that students have exposure to art, especially poetry. There’s so much mediation that goes in our culture, and students, I think, are very often distanced from language; to suddenly hear these really great, idiosyncratic poems from these high school kids, and hear them engaging with language in that way, is wonderful. I hear this young man get up and read this fascinating, funny poem about the NBA, all these basketball players, and think how only he could have written that, and how that kind of expression comes out of mentoring.” Sleigh smiles: “Kenneth Koch would have loved that poem.”

Lately, it feels as if poetry in public schools is a sort of secret agent—a shadowy spy in the House of Test Preparation, a fugitive fleetingly glimpsed by students as they are drilled and drilled again in subjects that have been deemed by some in education as “more practical” or “more real world.” Harried teachers are finding it more and more difficult to incorporate poetry—both reading it and writing it—into curriculums dictated by the current obsession with standardized tests. The Poetry Outreach Center takes some of the burden off teachers by sending poetry mentors to teach and encourage the art of poetry in classrooms where it otherwise might fall off the radar. “It’s crucial to public education,” says Sleigh. “Who knows what that kid who wrote that poem will do next in life, thanks to poetry?”

Photo: Gregory Crosby.  Photo Credit: Gregory Crosby.

Support for Readings & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Councl on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

P&W–supported poet Michael Medrano will blog about the literary climate in California's underserved Central Valley throughout the month of July. Medrano is the author of Born in the Cavity of Sunsets (Bilingual Press 2009). His poems have appeared in Askew; Bombay Gin; The Cortland Review; The Packinghouse Review; Rattle; and The Yellow Medicine Review among other publications. He is the host of Pakatelas, a literary radio show, streaming worldwide at www.kfcf.org, and hosts the Random Writers Workshop in Fresno, California.

Today, I write in a collaborative workspace known as The Hashtag in Fresno’s Tower District, an eclectic neighborhood often described by residents as a wannabe San Francisco or, as the kids on the eastside used to say, that gay neighborhood beyond the tracks. For me, the beloved Tower is more than a Bay Area cliché. It is my home, a place many Fresno poets have written about. It lies just east of the infamous Highway 99, another valley literary icon mentioned by Philip Levine, Gary Soto, and many more. It is where I conduct my literary radio show and lead the Random Writers Workshop, where I write and work on poems for my next book, which, you guessed it, is about the Tower District. You can say mi barrio is central headquarters for my personal arts movement!

Your personal arts movement? I hear my mother say, shaking her head, the pencil in her hand manically circling random letters in a giant word search book she keeps by the lamp.  Where’s my personal art movement, mijo? And while you’re at it, move out of that neighborhood. You know I don’t like you walking the streets by yourself!

Truth is, I stopped showing her my poems a decade ago because she could not stand me writing about familia, especially cousin Pee-Wee who died alone, by the canal, by Target. Don’t get me wrong. Mom has always been there at the big events, like when my book of poems came out, and I followed in that rich Fresno literary tradition by having a big ole, book release party. She teases me about the first poetry reading I co-organized with Tim Z. Hernandez, the much-talked-about reading where we performed to the only two members of the audience—our mothers! 

As a child, we used to take Olive Avenue from our East Fresno apartment all the way to Roeding Park, just west of the Tower. While there, we would picnic, visit the zoo or Storyland, which to us six-year-olds was just as amazing as Disneyland. Later, we would drive back to our eastside apartment down Olive Avenue, the main street of the Tower District. The miniature me would roll down the window, unbuckle the seatbelt in Mom’s 1978 Firebird while the car was in motion and point at all the little mom-and-pop restaurants. Let’s eat there, the restaurant with the big rooster on it! All I remember is that the streets were clean and the neighborhood seemed strangely alive.

Unfortunately, my mother always shot down those requests to visit the Tower. We can’t afford it! was her usual mantra, and who was I to question my own mom? I mean, it wasn’t like I was snooping around in her checkbook. I just took the rejection. Sad as I was in that six-year-old shell of my future self, I would vow, one day, to live in that great neighborhood just east of the freeway.

Ironically, I am completing this first blog post on Independence Day in a business I have supported the last couple of years; a place where I hammer out poems. Sure, the crime has piled on in recent years, and the artists, now, watch each other’s backs, more so in recent weeks. It’s true, maybe I should stray from walking home from the Hashtag at night, and maybe I should listen to my mother. I wonder how many writers have bucked the advice of their mothers. I bet there are many.

Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.