LINC Philadelphia led another teaching artist workshop at the Arden Theatre in Philly. Trepeta Mayson was the master poet.  She shared a lot of her tools for loosing up reluctant kids, and I always enjoy the perspective of the artist, regardless of the art.  And I come away re-educated and re-enforced in the similar ways we try to encourage art amongst the people, young and old.  It is a craft, you know.

 

What I gathered from this session, various ways to disarm the person who says, “I can’t write poetry”, by making it something else, a puzzle, a game, and, hopefully, eventually, an emotional connection with words. There are templates to help: love’hate, ‘I am’ poems , ‘I’m From’ poems, the senses (one line for each), focusing on good lines, phrases and words (and forget about sweating to figure out what it means), and, I like this one, you don’t have to rhyme. Cool.

 

I wrote a quick poem on my grandfather, the object to quickly write a few lines on your grandfather, based on “Never” and “Always”. Go….

 

I was always glad to see Pop Pop,

because he was never upset, never mad, never troubled.

But seeing him always meant Phillies, TastyKakes and scrapple.

I’ll never see him again, yet he always makes me smile.

 

 

Back to Bethlehem for a busy weekend in PA.