Teachers Write

This year I am participating in an online "summer camp" of sorts called Teachers Write. To learn more about what that entails, check out Kate Messner's blog. On Mondays, Jo Knowles, author of Living with Jackie Chan and other novels, posts her Monday warm up, which you can find on her livejournal. I'll be responding to this Monday's prompt below.

First, though, I want to reflect on why participating in Teachers Write is important to me. As an English Language Arts teacher, I am constantly modelling writing for my students. There isn't an assignment I have given where I haven't created an exemplar myself to offer them. Especially during our unit on slam poetry, I push my students to write bravely and personally - to use writing as a way to connect deeply with others. To show my genuine interest in their brave personal writing, I share my poetry, hoping to demonstrate the power of being vulnerable on the page. Teachers Write is a way for me to practice that vulnerability and also a way to hone my own writing craft so as to better teach my students.


Monday's prompt

Our hearts open to things that we find beautiful. In so many works of fiction the conflict is messy and painful and wrenching - but there's beauty there as well. As a writer of poetry, primarily, I find I am often drawn to the messy, painful, and heart-wrenching moments in life. But, as Jo Knowles suggests, I also identify with the beauty of those messy moments.

One of the prominent themes in my poetry is mental illness. And while I write often about the disorienting feeling of swimming in a parka, I also write about the all encompassing beauty that comes with choosing survival. There is darkness in this world, but at once so much light, the light of choice and the glorious stark-naked beauty of silence in a thrumming world.

On Kate's blog today, she suggests ways to delve into place descriptions and invite readers to come, too. A recent poem of mine fits both the theme of finding beauty, and Kate's suggestion on hunting for interesting details that make a place memorable. Here's my revised poem, A Moment of Bravery.

A Moment of Bravery

an empty park bench

frozen tree-framed view of the river

my first day outside in months

iron fence posts offer stark black contrast to the bleached grasses

a plastic bag shivers and snaps against the fence

green paint peels thin off the cold wood seat

I wiggle my toes - tentative - sockless in my winter boots

below the song of traffic hum and dripping snowmelt

my heart beats legato

the sun like a gleaming penny reflects off snowbanks

filling my mouth with the taste of copper 

and blinding me

so I sit eyes closed

my lungs stretching open like butterfly wings

the cocoon of my ribs straining

I lean into Spring with my whole being

choosing in this moment

to live