So I went to this Creative Writing Festival at a community college yesterday. The Creative Writing Festival is a week-long event curated by the community college's Creative Writing and English faculty. It is a celebration of writing, including visiting writing professionals, faculty, students and community members—writers and readers alike. One of the workshops I went to was called "Unexpected Arrivals: Writing Surprising Images". We had to first make a list, then use borrowing, and finally create chaos with grammar and mechanics to create one final poem.
"Unexpected Arrivals: Writing Surprising Images"
A poem is a series of departures and arrivals. A poet takes the reader to one image, then departs to another. Sometimes the reader arrives at the place they expected, but at its best, poetry can surprise—can take us to places the reader (and writer!) never anticipated. Those places offer us a sense of mystery and weirdness, a glimpse into other modes of consciousness and ways of being. This workshop offers tools for getting our poetry from the ordinary and predictable into some of those other places. Using as a guide the poem "4 Stars" by Oregon Poet Laureate and recent Columbia Writers Series guest Anis Mojgani, participants will write a poem by combining fragments of memory in unexpected ways. Then they will exchange images to create an even weirder, more surprising poem. Finally, they will try to break all the rules of grammar they can to arrive at unknown poetic terrain.
Meredith Kirkwood lives and writes in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Variant Literature, ONE ART, The Atlanta Review, The Eastern Iowa Review, Right Hand Pointing, and others. In addition to poetry, she also writes children’s books about lemurs. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and teaches writing and literature at Clark College. Find her on the web at www.meredithkirkwood.net.
So I did make a list, but I did not take a picture of it. When we got to the borrowing, we had to write down two things from our list onto an index card. We had two index cards to complete. Then the cards were shuffled and passed out to everyone present. We could either use those items on the index card in our current poem or create a new one. I decided to use all of the items I had in my current poem.
Index card #1
My screams of my auntie beating me in my room and my mom doing nothing
My dad on the phone yelling at my mom to take me to my mom to talk to her
Index card #2
I am home
Here is my final poem:
Creating Welts on My Behind Like Holes in the Sand
Written By Lẹwa Ubunifu
May 11, 2024
Broomsticks hitting my behind
Broomsticks create welts on my behind
The wish for me to just be loved
The sadness of death and despair
The longing for a home to call my own
Grown men groping my little body at 10 years old
High school personnel breaking all of my boundaries
No one loves the little black girl
No one loves the little black girl
Racist remarks from adults everywhere
White people spitting on me like they hate everything about me
White people touching and pulling at my black hair
Tearing me to shreds with their words and stares
No one loves the little black girl
No one loves the little black girl
Nigger dragged down the elementary school hall
and around the corner to nowhere at all
Derogatory words, sayings, labels,
and stones thrown at me for over forty years
Go back to Africa they constantly yell at me
White people destroyed my chance
to go back to the Motherland called Africa
No one loves the little black girl
No one loves the little black girl
Broomsticks hitting my behind
Creating welts on my behind
Like holes in the sand
My screams of my auntie beating me in my room
and my mom doing nothing
My dad on the phone yelling at me
to take me to my mom to talk to her
No one loves the little black girl
No one loves the little black girl
Quietly in the Library Bathroom
Blood seeps slowly from my soma and physique
I Am Home.
So the next workshop I went to was called "Opening Another Door: Symbolism in Poetry". We discussed a lot about symbolism in poetry. We read a poem called "Dishwater" by Ted Kooser. Then we had to work on our own poem. We were shown four items. They were laid out on a table for us to see. We were split into groups. Most groups had at least four people in each. We then came up with words or phrases describing what each item meant to us. The items were a unicorn, a mixtape, ballet shoes, and a Hot Wheels car. Then we had to write a poem using the items as symbols what one of the things that people stated they stood for. For instance, some of the things that my group stated that a unicorn stood for was: rarity, third, woes of immortality, prosperity, loyalty, friendship, magic, fantasy, and childhood.
"Opening Another Door: Symbolism in Poetry"
Symbolism opens the door for a poet to say more with fewer words, and a striking symbol adds depth and intrigue to a poem. In this workshop, we will look at models of how others have used symbols and create symbols of our own. The workshop will be group oriented: the more brains, the better! We'll have fun and play with words.
Lisa Bullard works at Clark College as a writing tutor for the Veteran's Center of Excellence and an English professor. She loves to play with poetry, and try her hand at other genres too, and she enjoys sharing her love of writing with others, inviting them in and learning from them as well. One random tidbit is that besides working with words, Lisa is learning about sailing and loving everything about that!
Here is my final poem:
My Dear Unicorn
Written By Lẹwa Ubunifu
May 11, 2024
My dear unicorn
Of how I loved thee
The mixtape now on the shelf
Long forgotten in the days of old
Life rewinds to a time
Where fun meant Hot Wheels
Especially in the countryside
Now that unicorn is old and gone
Past away into the night
And my ballet shoes that died with it years ago
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