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Make a list of the names of your family members and friends. Use all of them to create a poem. Try writing a tiny letter to each name, using free association to link each name with another word, or describing each briefly as if it were a character or object.
In this blast from the past, School House Rock! presents "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here," which first aired in 1974 as part of the series of educational short films featuring music that, nearly forty years later, is still difficult to get out of one's mind. Remember "Conjunction Junction," which first aired in 1973? Who could forget?
Since 2010, P&W-supported poet and spoken word artist Clara Nura Sala has been conducting poetry workshops with veterans. We asked Clara to describe the experience.
Sponsored by Elders Share the Arts, I'm teaching a poetry workshop for veterans at the Veteran's Hospital on 23rd Street in Manhattan. Participants come from across New York City, from Staten Island to the Upper West Side. The veterans vary in age, but the majority are between the ages of fifty-five and seventy—having served in the Korean, Vietnam, and/or Gulf Wars. The participants seldom bring up their war experiences directly. However, it does come up organically in the context of their poems.
I like to push them to the edge of discovery, emotionally and creatively. These amazingly talented group of men respond with original, moving, and very well-crafted poems. I've introduced stream-of-consciousness and improvisational writing exercises. I've also introduced contemporary poets, such as Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, and e.e. cummings. We share our poems aloud, and offer praise and constructive criticism. I say "we" because I consider myself part of the class, not just the facilitator. I write along with the class. I am in the experience with them, and they inspire me to write wonderful and spontaneous poems.
Some participants have expressed that the workshop has become therapeutic. I take this as a high compliment to the workshop's structure, which allows for both maximum creative expression and intimately personal discussions. These men have been greatly affected by their experience with war (most of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and a couple have schizophrenia). The group is so loving, caring, and kind and extremely supportive of each other. I am honored to know them, to share their lives, their art, and their vulnerability.
Photo: Clara Nura Sala and workshop participants. Photo Credit: Gregory Hicks.
Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.
In 1960 Carl Sandburg, the poet, journalist, Lincoln biographer, and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, appeared on CBS's “What’s My Line?” which ran from 1950 to 1967, the year Sandburg died.
Experiment with form, creating an upcycled poetic object, by writing a poem using found materials.
For the month of July, poet Olga Garcia, author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas, blogs about her experience facilitating poetry workshops as a longtime P&W-supported writer.
It's May 2009 and the scorching sun casts long shadows on the streets of downtown Calexico. I’ve driven 230 miles southeast of Los Angeles, past the Salton Sea, to arrive in this furnace of a city that boasts three-digit temperatures. I’m here to facilitate an R/W-sponsored bilingual poetry workshop at Camarena Library, and I’ve arrived early enough to explore.
When it comes to border towns,
Calexico has it all: the U.S.-Mexico border you can walk up to, sniff,
stare at, curse, or cross; señores in sombreros and thick leather belts; big women
in church dresses, waving religious pamphlets in the air; a corner stop featuring
menudo, donuts, and border patrol agents. Sure, there’s a Starbucks, a few Walmarts,
but what tugs at me is the historic shopping district, the brick archways and
columns, the cement bus benches, and the discount stores.
Hours later, I arrive at Camarena Library, sweaty and a bit anxious. I’ve been teaching for twelve years, yet I feel like a novice. The unknowns of a workshop always stir me. Who will come? Adults? Teens? What language(s) will they speak? I’ve brought three different handouts with me—English, Spanish, and bilingual. I don’t know which one I’ll be using.
Ten minutes until workshop and no one has arrived. Brief panic. Did I ditch work to go sightseeing? I flashback to Calexico’s rustic downtown, recalling its charm, the chilidogs I ate at a tiny stand and decide that even if nobody shows, the trip was worth it.
They arrive. First a woman and two men. Then a mother with her teenaged son. Within minutes I have a small group curiously looking at the altar displayed on a table. I invite them to pick up the objects—seashells, ripe fruits, pictures of birds in flight, bright-colored plastic flowers purchased at one of Calexico’s fabulous discount stores.
In our introductions I
learn that almost everyone is bilingual. Now I know what materials to use, what exercises to dive into. A workshop, though, is much more than a
pre-planned lesson. It’s a breathing thing with a collective pulse. Each class generates
its own unique energy. In Calexico, the group is intimate and quiet.
I feel the need to chat before we begin. When I tell them I live in Los Angeles, they’re surprised at how far I’ve traveled for this two-hour workshop. “I’ve wanted to visit Calexico for years,” I tell them. They look at me like I’m crazy. I confess that having grown up between two languages and cultures, I have a thing for border towns. I relay my day’s adventures in downtown, how I snapped hundreds of photos and interviewed residents on the streets as if I were a journalist. They laugh, opening up, sharing a few of their own stories and insights about their hometown. We delve into our poetry workshop like this, crossing borders...connecting.
Photos: (Top) Olga Garcia. Credit: Weenobee.com; (bottom) workshop participants. Credit: Olga Garcia.
Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
First watch this introduction to America: Now and Here, then read Alex Dimitrov's article about the role poetry is playing in the national art project, in the current issue.
America: Now and Here is a modern-day traveling show that brings the work of some of America’s leading poets, musicians, visual artists, playwrights, and filmmakers to audiences across the country.
As Robert Casper settled into his new role as the director of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, he spoke about what the center has to offer and his plans for how to make the most of its resources and reach.
A nearly seventy-year-old literary award that honored works in all genres by young, emerging writers is buckling under the pressure of budget woes. Booktrust, the organization that has for the past nine years sponsored the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, given since 1942 to writers under the age of thirty-five, announced earlier this week that government funding cuts forced it to revamp its program portfolio, shuttering the award—at least for 2011.
The prize, according to author Margaret Drabble, who won the award in 1966 and lamented its loss in the Guardian, is "one of the most romantic and distinguished of prizes," more so than the oldest major U.K. award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, or the Booker. The five-thousand-pound award (roughly eight thousand dollars) is given to writers "at the outset of their careers, when a sign of approval means much more than it does in their cynical, competitive, commercial later years."
The 2009 winner, Evie Wyld—who won for her novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (Pantheon)—says the award "gave me a platform to work off, and I'm not sure I'd be in the position I am in now, had the Rhys not brought such a large amount of attention with it," including radio appearances and articles. Among the other poets and prose writers who have taken the prize in the past are Angela Carter, Andrew Motion, V. S. Naipaul, and Jeanette Winterson.
Booktrust, which is pursuing alternate avenues for maintaining the prize, told the Guardian it hopes to bring the Rhys "back with a bang as soon as possible," possibly even in 2012.
In the video below, Wyld reads from her winning book, a "romantic thriller about men who aren't talking."
![What's My Line? - Carl Sandburg; Milton Berle; Nick Adams [panel] (Sep 11, 1960)](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/video_thumb_medium/public/media-oembed/i.ytimg.com/vi/GkJ2-rP78TU/hqdefault.jpg?itok=CRKRwP_1)
