Workshopping

Today was the day that my first poetry workshop ran. I have been planning for this moment for months, and as per usual, had grown excessively high expectations of what would happen.

I was not ready for what actually did. The slam poetry videos I chose to play contained profanity that I somehow missed when listening to them at home, so I had to drop them. My attendance rate in my imagination was the size of an average classroom, but come reality I only had six people turn up. In the heart of the library, we sat, speaking about haiku and cinquain poetry. 

The girls were very attentive. They listened to all that I said, and partook in the same level of interest as I had anticipated. They all cooperated and produced lovely pieces of poetry that I was appreciative of. I was more timid than they were but tried not to show it, as I was the role model in that situation - who knew what I would uncover?

What I uncovered made me feel much better than a panda feels at the crack of a fresh bamboo stick. I uncovered a student who befits the label 'outcast'. She reminded me of myself when I was back in high school, the lone ranger of the private school world, sketching and writing to myself in the corner of classrooms.

Her poems were based on her loneliness and the fact that she too is a lone ranger. I did not know how to handle that situation. This is the type of situation that nobody can teach you about, that no textbook nor no theorist can prepare you for. And I do not think that I handled it adequately enough. If anything, I steered most of the attention away from her, but I think she revelled in that because of the look of content on her face.

I made them all read their poems, as little as they were. When that girl read her poem, and projected her voice like I told her to, I felt her crawl slowly out of her shell. I felt like I connected with her in the way that I had initially wanted to, and that is my aim in this project, to target those without a chance and to grant it to them, to grant them a time for their voices to be heard, to grant them a place where they do not feel alienated, rather welcome.

This project will prove interesting over the course of these two weeks. I just hope to target more soul, more spirituality, more convergence. That is, what I believe, what matters most in a school environment. To pick up the fallen.