We’ve tried for a long while to get a poetry group up and running at the studio. Thanks to instructor Paige Warren, we’ve finally done it!
This fall we had a short-run Poetry Workshop that had amazing group of writers. Amazing and prolific! Here’s just one very short example from longtime StoryStudio writer, Kelley Clink:
October 30, 2008
Ladybug
shells—
look again
Not as
empty
as I’d
imagined
But
slow moving
on
cold legs
Always be a poet, even in prose. ~Charles Baudelaire
Writing a novel is like building a house, with similar concerns about foundation, structure, architecture, logical process, and so forth. If you’re building an entire house, you might have moments of zen-like concentration as you engage in each task, but you might also keep all the big questions of structure and form in your head as you put up drywall and check levels.
Writing a poem, though, is like building a garden wall, stone by stone. As you work, you hold each stone in your hand, feeling its texture and weight, without bigger questions like “What is this?” and “Where is it going?” to distract you from your task. It’s a wall, you answer quietly. It’s going along the back of the garden. Now pay attention to how each stone fits against each other stone, how they grow warm in the sun.
Years of writing poetry gave me a mason’s knowledge of words, even as I tackled the larger questions of structure, plot, and pacing. Now, when I get stuck in fiction, I go back to my roots and consider my prose from a poetic standpoint, or write poetry in a character’s voice, or distill the meat of the chapter into verse. I turn to poetry for truth.
We have seldom been in such dire need of poetry. ~Mark Baechtel
Luckily, StoryStudio is offering a 4 Week Poetry Workshop to reground us in the stones and bricks of worldbuilding. Whether you’re a poet at heart, or a fiction writer who doesn’t spend enough time digging around in the dirt of words and lines, the Poetry Workshop will help you play with words.
Do you find yourself doodling poems in the margins of your notebooks? Chat about your inspiration and perspiration in the Writer’s Lounge.
For the next ten weeks of my life the words StoryStudio Chicago will not be in my weekly planner. For the next ten weeks I will be working for an after school program called, Words@Play facilitated by the Chicago Parks and Recreation and also the Chicago Children’s Humanities Festival. I am super psyched for the chance to teach in this award winning program, but am sad to see myself absent from the studio. I will be working my regular 40 hour a week position at a local women’s non profit as an assistant grant writer and also working a residency with Hands on Stanza’s for the Poetry Center of Chicago. So it’s not like I will be sitting on my duff while missing out on my shifts here. Though I’m desperately at a loss with knowing I won’t be using my pink key to open up the studio for a night of classes.
When I made the decision to temporarily leave my post here at StoryStudio it came with a heavy heart. As a writer I feel I have a slight quality of being a creature of habit. Not to say that all writer’s share this, though most I’ve met have in someway exhibited this characteristic in some form or another. It was the choice of overextending myself and doing everything I loved poorly, or doing things I loved well and having to sacrifice one of the things I have come to adore the most about my life. My involvement at StoryStudio Chicago has been a huge part of “keep Marissa sane and connected” regime.
As a Poet/Educator I have learned that what I need more than anything is energy. If I am not exuding an enthusiastic warmth, then a discussion about why line breaks exist in the poem is nothing a child could possibly be interested in learning about. I have spent the last two years at StoryStudio learning as much as I could from all the teachers, the students and staff I have met and have discovered that what it takes to be successful in writing, is the courage to recognize one’s strengths and one’s weakness and moving forward. I am hopeful that my ten weeks with Words@Play will further enhance my abilities as a teacher and an artist and most importantly remind me as to why poetry is one of the largest loves of my life.
I am only slightly encouraged about the fact that once I get started, once the fall is in full swing and winter hits the city, ten weeks will melt away into a rush of white. The amazing core group that is StoryStudio Chicago staff has enabled me to take this opportunity and I am so grateful to them for working as a team to pull off covering ten weeks worth of my shifts. I really found the supportive network of writers I feel every writer dreams about. Writing isn’t just something I do, it’s something I want to live and breath, just like so many I know, have known and will know. Being a Poet/Educator is something that during my MFA days never came into my realm of thinking because I thought it was unattainable. Now, I know that living off doing what you are most passionate about is a possibility.
Just look around you when you’re here in the studio, everyone here is doing something they are passionate about, taking that next step, opening that new door. It’s beautiful! I am proud to be a part of this space and am jealous of everyone that gets to take a class this fall! See you this winter!
I try to buy a copy of Poetry Magazine every month. I love reading it on the train, and fitting it into my bag is easy because it’s all slim and pretty (the cover art is usually exotic and curious). This month’s edition I had a problem with the wording in one of the poems, so I wrote a letter to the editor asking if this was perhaps a grammar issue. Needless to say, a few days later I received a very short and hurried response. Apparently, per the editor, I had “a problem” with the way it was worded, and no, the poem wasn’t in need of editing. Ok - thanks for pointing out that my reading was “wrong” and what was printed nationally was in fact correct. Jeez. Note to the Editor of Poetry Magazine: If I write a letter to you in the future, I’d like a grammatical explanation describing the issue versus a letter that lays issue with my “problem.”
Knowing that I am on a bridge writing this, I will just throw over my line and see what I catch.
I went away this weekend, and when I came back, I wasn’t happy about being home. Sure, the city of Chicago has grown on me, sure there are a handful of people I care about, and sure I have three jobs that I am passionate about. Yet, I knew that as soon as the plane touched down, that my urge to get off that plane had more to do with moving forward than going home. If that makes any sense?
Everyone has told me the past few years that I consistently give too much, that I am more accommodating and understanding and tolerant of my relationships than most. I tend to give allowances where they may not really be due; though after this weekend, I am starting to doubt my backbone.
This weekend I attended a tattoo festival. I’ve come to love them. They give me an opportunity to be around people that have as much invested in skin and ink as I do. And I don’t just mean monetarily. The majority of the people I see at these conventions are there because they’ve sought after a certain artist that will be tattooing at the event. It’s just like any AWP conference I’ve been to, or music festival. You’re there because you share a common passion, a drive, an obsession, a desire that moves you more than most things.
After spending all that time going from booth to booth looking at people’s art and pictures of their livelihood inked on bodies of people I’ll never meet, I was baffled by how far away I feel not only from those that I will never meet, but even those that on the surface profess to having a “relationship” with me.
Though – the furthest relationship I have at the moment is unfortunately with my writing. My poetry has taken the proverbial backseat to hands that have almost nothing tangible to show for it. There comes a point when you just have to start making choices. And those choices may not be beneficial to anyone but yourself. But I’m a firm believer in taking care of oneself in order to take care of everyone else around you. Too bad writing and poetry have been the only formidable ailments in my past, and too bad they have been so distant.
If you’re feeling far from your writing and would like to revisit your passion, maybe look to one of our awesome one night classes this summer? You’ll probably find me in the Time Management for Writers.
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