Picture this: a giant conference room at the famous Huntington Library and Gardens, with the customary coffee and pastry tables set up and a slideshow going on the overhead projector. People with name tags shuffle in and out, some pausing to say hello to a familiar face, some pausing to scoop up a croissant.
It might sound familiar, but this is no ordinary, boring-ass conference: this is a WriteGirl creative writing workshop, and the genre focus of this one is Poetry. In the courtyard outside the conference room, there's a carnival set-up complete with a poetry Wheel of Fortune, where the options (aka challenges) include things like "onomatopoeia" and "synesthesia." A sign-in table offers poetry-related quotes stuck to postcards: keepsakes the teen participants can tuck into their journals. And inside the conference room: 200+ teen girls and women writers. In their laps are journals, and mentor-mentee pairs bend silently over their pages, scribbling madly. They'll write poetry all day long, and at the end of the day--I swear to God--a huge line of teen girls will form, each hoping to get her turn at the microphone to share a poem before the workshop comes to an end.
This was the atmosphere at the 19th Annual WriteGirl Poetry Workshop, where I was honored to be a guest poet. I got up in front of the big conference room and reminded everyone that poetry isn't dead--it's an art form practiced now, by people very much alive, many of whom look and sound nothing like Shakespeare or Frost (who are wonderful, but certainly not representative of the totality of human experience or language). I worked with two separate breakout groups, walking them through a fun activity that would challenge them to dig into their memories and write Poetry of Place. And I got to work with other incredible poets like Ashaki Jackson, Yazmin Monet Watkins, and Ryka Aoki. It was an inspiring day, and I left feeling full of energy and magic, ready to sit down with my own journal and hammer out some lines.
Full disclosure: I know this feeling well, because I've been involved with WriteGirl Los Angeles in one capacity or another since 2008, mostly as a volunteer, and most memorably, as a mentor for one of the amazing teen girls who has been served by this organization. And here's the plug: WriteGirl empowers teen girls (inclusive of trans and nonbinary teens) with creative writing workshops, one-on-one mentorship, and an Education team that helps them with college applications, including applications for grants & scholarships. In short, it's an invaluable organization that lifts up young people in a city where many teens are the first in their families to go to college. They've expanded their programming in recent years to serve teen boys, too, along with incarcerated youth and pregnant and parenting teens. If this sounds like the kind of organization you'd like to learn more about, donate to, and/or get involved with, check them out at www.writegirl.org.
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