Poetry Groups

Learning by Going # 6: “I learn by going where I have to go.”

/ Naomi Cohn / 1 Comment

In his poem  “The Waking”  Theodore Roethke says:

“ I learn by going where I have to go.”

I used to have that poem by heart, helped by its cadence, repetition and form (something called a villanelle…another favorite example is Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”). But most days, I am still not sure what Roethke’s poem means. One of the lovely things about a poem is you don’t have to grasp it on a logical level for it to be part of your life. And that line, “I learn by going where I have to go” has become a kind of mantra for me. It is, I suppose, another way of saying, I seem to be an experiential learner…

If you had asked me five years ago whether I would be specializing in using poetry with older adults, I don’t think I would have told you that was in my plans. But in addition to the strange serendipity of connecting to working with people two or three decades older than myself  (initially through a family therapy internship,)  there is a very real way in which these writing sessions I’ve developed grow out of continual experiment—Each session I develop I try something new, large or small. Each session, through experiment, I’m experiencing what works best, what’s within my capacity.

My first exposure to people using poetry with older adults was through the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. A PP MN specializes in engaging and enlivening older adults, especially those with dementia, through poetry and creating group poems. I’ve been very fortunate to have some wonderful mentors in learning about arts and aging, including Patricia Samples, Zoë Bird, and Rachel Moritz, all of who generously shared the ways that they successfully use poetry and writing and creativity with older adults.

I love their work. And I quickly realized the creating group homes probably wasn’t going to work for me. Since I’m legally blind, writing down peoples words on a big flip chart and then transcribing it later was a complicated task. Of course there are other ways to capture people’s words, but this difficulty, while no doubt surmountable, led me in a different direction.

It led me to working with older adults who Still have the capacity to create individual works, for the most part, their own writing in class. And ironically , through working with groups of older adults on their own individual voices and poems, overtime I found more ways to build creative community.

At first I saw my family therapy learning and work and my teaching artist work as very separate. But overtime I have brought more and more and more of my family therapy expertise around how people interact with each other to the work I do with poetry.

The writing groups are not therapy.  That’s part of what I love about these groups. There is a certain kind of freedom in working In a “nonclinical” space. But my students teach me again and again how deep and meaningful the  community of support and encouragement that people can create in a writing group can be. More soon.

Peace

Naomi

Learning by Going, #2: You Don’t Even Need a Window

/ Naomi Cohn / 1 Comment

 

frame-viewfinder-2-img_3596

I organize a lot of Known by Heart/Writing Home poetry sessions around windows. There are tons of interesting poems that  feature windows (see a couple below). I also like to connect writing to other art forms, so sometimes we write responding to images of paintings —Many students respond especially to Vermeer, whose paintings are filled with windows, seen and implied.

I also like to introduce something painters call a view-finder.

A viewfinder  can be as simple as a piece of card stock with a rectangle cut in it. There are fancier adjustable versions. Simple or fancy, painters use a viewfinder to select what scene or slice of the world they choose to paint.

I like to introduce writing and poetry craft elements as things, that once we learn about them, give us more choices. For example, we may or may not want to rhyme or have lines with a certain number of stresses or syllables, but once we know what a line is, we have more choices about how we use them in a poem.

And the viewfinder is an object lesson in what to me is the first element of writing craft:

We get to choose what to write about.

And this is one of those places where art-making and wellness intersect. Making choices is a key aspect of art-making, of finding our unique voice, of honing our craft. And to bring in the mental health or therapy perspective, having a sense of choice and making choices even in difficult times or situations, is a key aspect of emotional well-being.

So back to the writing with a view-finder. When I do this activity, writers often choose to focus on something within the room where they are writing. But it’s very helpful to have a window. It gives writers more choices; for writers with mobility limitations, a window with a view is no small thing in maintaining a connection to the world outside.

I give participants each a viewfinder, show how you can include more or less of a scene by bringing the frame closer or farther away from your eye.

It’s such a treat to hear what an array of images or stories a group of writers write looking out the same window. Suddenly one scene prisms into the individual perspectives of the writers.

But I was a little dismayed recently when I walked into a room I hadn’t taught in before equipped with my stack of viewfinders to realize there were no windows that my writers could look out at. I had been in the space a few years before, new it was a basement, but remembered it had windows. But I had forgotten they were not clear glass. No view to the outside world and not much to inspire in the room: Stacks of chairs,  formica tables, drab carpet.

But I shouldn’t have worried. The group dug in with gusto and found thinks to write about I would never have imagined—persona poems from the perspectives of the furniture, internal monologues, a prose poem about a lost loved one.

So what did I learn that day? Trust your writers. If people have made the effort to show up, they will find a way to write something fresh, unique, compelling, from the heart. The writers remind me we have the power of choosing what to focus on in even the most unpromising setting.

That’s something that has a use way beyond that one poetry class.

A Couple of Window Poems:

Alicia Ostriker, “August Morning, Upper Broadway”

Natasha Trethewey, “Incident”

 

Gratitude for a night to remember

/ Naomi Cohn / Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday’s Known by Heart event at the Hamline library had a great turnout. Who know so many people cared about poetry and memory?

I loved hearing John Minczeski’s and Andrea Jenkins’ take on the question of the connections between poetry and memory; I loved learning from audience members that some of them get together as a group and memorize poems.

 Thanks to all the people who came to the event; to  John and Andrea for taking part in the Known by Heart experiment; to Zaraaawar Mistry of Dreamland Arts  for his good-humored  and amazing mentoring on ways to perform poems; to Jon Skaalen  of VSA Minnesota and Morgan Gracye Willow for ASL guidance;  to the Thursday night poets Ann McKnley, Lia Rivamonte, Barbara Davis, Sue Kunitz,  MaryAnn Franta Moenck,  and Alice Duggan; to the Studios of Key West; to Alayne Hopkins from the Friends,to John and the Hamline Midway librarian,  to Dona Schwartz and Karen Hering for project and other wisdom; and to Ray for being Ray.

 Thanks also to the Minnesota State Arts Board and The Friends of the St. Paul Public Libry and the Hamline Midway Library for helping make this event possible.

 Naomi Cohn  is a fiscal year 2011 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.