Re-organizing

For some reason, I have a keen spacial perception that is perfect for a number of things: packing cars full of luggage, organizing rooms of furniture, and as I discovered today, figuring out how to organize and find space for all of the materials for writing workshops in the tiniest closet space! James, another volunteer, and I spent most of our time sorting through materials and finding places for them in the closet or the one cabinet in the workshop room. I think it was James who said, he finds it easier to clean and re-organize someone elses space than it is for him to reorganize his own space. There is something true about that, because this process that could feel like a terrible chore was actually a perfect break from the crazy intellectual world of my last week of college classes. Not to mention, the closet looked amazing after we were done with it today.

Monthly Donations

Everyday I take the LC Shuttle to my internship and usually I walk to the library downtown to do some work (The shuttle arrives just after 10am and my internship begins at 11am). But its always a struggle to find the best path to take while walking downtown in order to avoid getting pulled aside and guilt-tripped into spending money on just about any kind of nonprofit organization. I've had people chase me from one corner to the next saying -- can't you spare 75 cents for starving children? Who can walk away from this without feeling like a terrible person? I think I walk away feeling angry, I am perfectly happy to hear about different organizations on the street, sign petitions, get informed, but I have absolutely no income right now, not to mention a mound of student loans that are not subsidized by the government and are gathering interest faster than I can speak.

It is sort of ironic that when I get to the WRAP office, we are putting together a mailing asking for monthly donations. I talked to Beth about the street people downtown, and she said that she tells them that she donates to three organizations (because she does donate to three organizations). She choose the ones that she felt best supporting. But the people at WRAP aren't about guilt tripping people. Their letter was very sweet, and focused on how thankful they were for the help and involvement of the people who have participated in WRAP in the past. It was personalized with the signatures of all 4 women in the office. And thanks to Steve and I, the envelopes also had hand-written names and addresses on them.

Everyone's got to survive during these tough economic times, but I appreciate the approach that is more about uplifting people and welcoming ways for people to support the communities they want, then getting guilt tripped on the street and having strangers question my character based on how much money I am willing to donate. (forgive the rant...)

Out Sick

This week is the week to review submissions for the anthology and make decisions in a committee. I really wanted to be a part of this process, but I got really sick on Sunday and have been pretty much in bed every chance I can get. I'm glad I stayed home on Tuesday to recover, and now that it is the end of the week I am feeling much better. But I'm sad I missed out on the selection process this week.

Finding the name of the event

Write Around Portland has a fancy, fun creative writing party that generates a lot of funding for the group. In previous years they have called the event "Wordigo" but it turns out this word is trademarked by someone else. When I was at work today I was asked to keep a piece of paper by my desk to write down any clever names for the event that I could think of. I worked at Sara's desk in the office today because Sara was out sick, and I am still working on updating information on all of the Partners that WRAP has ever worked with. I spent a lot of today searching the web for addresses and phone numbers, and it was sad to find out that some organizations that used to cater to the Portland Community no longer exist now. One example is the restitution center. I came across this powerful website which has photographs of places that now no longer serve the community because of budget cuts in government funding.

In between internet searches, Beth, Dawn, and Robyn (all directors at WRAP) offered all kinds of ideas for what to name the event. My sheet of paper next to the desk was full of silly ideas. I think my best invention of the day was "poescape," mixing the word poetry (or poesy) with escape.

This Week: Interview with a seasoned writer

Today I interviewed Ronald Steward Marshall, a writer currently in the seasoned writers workshop with write around portland. I have conducted interviews for my own personal interest before (on our collective "Trip Down South" blog we included an interview with a Paste Magazine representative), but I found this experience to be really rewarding. Ron isn't someone I would have known to seek out for myself, but since I'm volunteering at the office on Tuesdays, they asked me to conduct the interview. I learned more about the workshops and how they are run. Apparently participants can sign up for up to three workshops, and after that they are allowed to sign up for the "Seasoned Writers" workshops which I think are titled "write on."

Ron told me about what it's been like for him to be in these workshops. He explained that people start to open up and trust one another, and no matter what your differences are with people in the room (and there are always many differences, even just based on appearance), everyone comes with the same interest in mind and becomes equal for that reason. He said we are all the same, "we are all writers."

The interview will be posted soon on the front page of write around portlands website which is: writearound.org.

Reading through Collections

It's been another dreary week, with lots of clouds and rain. But it was a perfect day to sit on the couch with James (one of the most experienced volunteers at Write Around), and read through all of the publications in search of some of our favorite poems. They want to make sure old publications don't simply sit on the shelf, so volunteers have been reading through the entries to find some of our favorites so that they can make it back into the light of day.

Some poems may be published from older editions in the new editions so that people who get the new editions get a sense of what's been published in the past, and how it is all very diverse!

Some of the stories people wrote were hilarious, others were extremely difficult to swallow, many expressed what its like to move on or deal with a very difficult situation. But it is great to see a collection with so many voices of so many common people that we just wouldn't hear from otherwise. Some with an incredible sense of how to capture a physical world, others focusing entirely on an emotional state. I found these stories really touching, and I look forward to meeting more participants who have been in the workshops and had their work published. (James is one of them, I picked his piece as one of my favorites before I realized it was his! Which seems to be appropriate considering the title of his poem which is "Can't tell by looking") He described his past, beginning with the phrase "you can't tell by looking that I", and he goes on to describe some incredibly challenging events he's lived through. Just hearing anyone willing to record those experiences makes me a little shocked, considering how many stories lie behind the people we pass by on the street without knowing much of anything about their past.

Attending my first Workshop

Ruby and I attended the sisters of the road workshop this week. It is part of the 10 free workshops Write Around Portland is providing to celebrate their 10 year anniversary. We showed up during the 10 minute break, and apparently two other participants had to leave, so there were just enough seats for us to fill.

Being part of this workshop was a lot of fun to me. I felt completely comfortable writing alongside a group of others and sharing my work, especially after one of the paricipants shared his work. Our first exercise was to pick an object or two from a bunch of objects that were emptied onto the table to write about. We could write about anything but we had to write for at least 8 minutes.

One man wrote about a slinky, someone else about a piece of bark, another person about a comb. I wrote about a door key and focused on its shape. Having the added experience of participating in the writing workshop of my poetry class at LC, i found this experience particularly rewarding because I could feel how incredibly different it is to write in an academic setting verses a community setting. First of all, the participants ranged the board from people around my age to women and men in their 40's and 50's. Second of all, I felt no pressure in this environment, it felt like a purely imaginative generative meeting where I was allowing my brain to spit out whatever images come. Additionally, everyone was required to give positive feedback. I found myself looking for the good in poems and lines, and it felt very uplifting to be part of an experience where the goal isn't to produce magnificent poetry but merely to get a start and to share it with others. It made me remember that poetry affects people, especially when real people are there reading it, without the distance that a piece of paper published in a book creates.

Sometimes in academic settings, the pressure to be exceptional kills that initial creativity. I think the workshops are structured in a way to make sharing and creating as easy as possible, by providing lots of encouragement and many sources for inspiration. Our facilitator also shared a poem with us to use as a starting point for a poem of another free-write.

We spent every last minute of the workshop writing and responding to eachother's writing. I was so happy to get to experience the workshop, it makes me that much happier to be volunteering for this great organization.