Here it is...the cover of "Our Difficult Sunlight"

As Quraysh and I approach the tangible joy of holding our book in our hands in the near future, here is a quick peek at the cover, with the gorgeous cover image by Joyce Owens. Thanks Joyce and thanks Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Just 2 weeks to the Chicago book launch! The tip of the iceberg in presenting this project to the world. We appreciate all who helped us get to this magnificent moment. More soon!

Sunday, the Week Behind, the One Ahead

I am in the midst of a big push with my work in schools, adjusting the other elements of my work to my teaching and travel schedule, striving to finish up all the back log of pending projects one at a time until I am current and planning ahead for what is next. This is the goal of my year ahead, to achieve this clearing of the slate and creating new goals for my future.

I have the honor of this work as a poet and teaching artist. In all honesty, I am rather amazed that I am where I am, living my prime identity as my profession as well as foundation. It is not an avocation; I am and always have been a poet. The Journey of Return is complete and I am so very grateful, if not astounded.

In classrooms, I witness amazing and sometimes confounding things. There are miracles every day and it is a gift to receive the moments with students and teachers that are presented to me to appreciate. The outcome of any lesson or activity can never be fully anticipated and we do not, or should not, underestimate the power of art, the power of language, and the human spirit. We will always be surprised as we teach. And we are always able to marvel at the power of learning and the teachable moment. We also are strongest when we are willing to learn ourselves.

And we teach what we want to know. I have always been confused by those who claim that teaching (particularly as a teaching artist in K-12 education) detracts from their art, or somehow distorts, dilutes their own aesthetic or integrity. I find just the opposite. By having to explain and impart the elements of my art form, poetry, to hundreds or thousands of other human beings, be they 6 years old or 70, I am articulating my own poetic viewpoint to others in the hopes of sharing the perspective to show ways for the students to amplify their own efforts in writing. In that telling, I understand my own relationship with the craft more and more. 

I anticipate that there will always be a question that causes me to stop and consider. There are challenges to my premise and I find the need to make the argument. But mostly, it is about enthusiasm, the transfer in energy that causes momentum in the wonder and participation of a roomful of 4th graders or an adult community program intro to poetry class.

It is just a few weeks before Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (Teachers and Writers Collaborative, 2011) is back from the printers. My creative partner and co-author, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and I are planning book launches in Chicago, New York, and Syracuse to present our premise to our colleagues and communities of writers, educators, and artists. It is exciting that, after years of thinking, planning, noting, negotiating, drafting, honing and revising, cutting, waiting, pushing, it is nearly done. Just a few days and the cycle of creation that any book entails will be complete. Soon we will have it in hand and will be sharing it with others.

I am looking forward to all the opportunities that will present themselves through the exchange that the book Quraysh and I have created will initiate, if we meet our goals with the project. We have stated our individual views of poetry and learning, our shared pedagogy and philosophy, even some of our politic, with the intention of offering perspectives that help any teacher or writer in their own teaching practice. Quraysh and I both love poetry and we love to teach. This book would not have been what it is if either of us had attempted it on our own, something we both reminded ourselves of regularly throughout the creative process.

We are proud of what Our Difficult Sunlight has shone itself to be. We are looking forward to the events and in-service workshops that we are planning now to support the book. We are hoping that we will have books in hand at the AWP conference in a couple of weeks. At the Book Fair, find information at the Writers in the Schools Alliance table. Copies will be for sale at the booth that Comstock Review will share with three other organizations from Central/Upstate New York:  Syracuse's Downtown Writer's Center, Stone Canoe, and from Rochester, Writers and Books.

Quraysh and I are presenting a panel, "The Youth Voice Amplified: Poetry and Social Justice in Classroom and Community," Saturday at 3:00 - 4:15 p.m. I am also joining a panel sponsored by the Writers in the Schools Alliance on Thursday - 3:00 p.m., titled "A Classroom as Big as the World."

There will be more announcements. For now, I am still marveling at all the students I have spent the past few weeks with and prepping for the week ahead. More about that as well. I pledge to be more proactive with my posts. There is so much to convey. Thanks for reading and stay warm. Now time for more football, a sport I am finally coming to understand. Happy Sunday and playoffs.

Back in the Saddle

Now that I am fully supporting as a poet, editor, and teaching artist, my cycles are revealing themselves. The summers have become a period of reading and writing, for the most part. I can spend time on the front porch or the back deck, especially because my wireless router provides mobility. Autumn is when I teach a discussion seminar, Viewing the World through Changing Lenses, for the Renee Crown Honors Program at Syracuse University and generally a course or two for the Downtown Writer’s Center. Then, in late fall, my work in schools begins and I am back on the road through the spring blossoming.

This fall I had a terrific experience with all three classes while I also completed the revision and finer edits with Quraysh Ali Lansana on our book, Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community, which will be available from Teachers & Writers Collaborative in February 2011. The Honors course included nine very talented college students with a tremendous commitment to themselves and the learning process. The DWC courses were equally fulfilling; both for adult writers, one was an intro to poetry and the second was an advanced workshop for poets who have engaged in the DWC PRO Certification Program. Since I live by the motto, “teach what you want to learn,” immersion in the craft and facilitating the exploration of two groups of writers gave me reason to keep myself sharp at all times. Best part is that, now that Our Difficult Sunlight is completed, I can go back to the pile of poems that have been sorely neglected and perhaps finish several book projects.

I also had a quick turnaround trip to Orlando early Thanksgiving week to join a panel of remarkable colleagues to present a post-conference intensive workshop for the National Council of Teachers of English. This day focused on the power of writers in the classroom and it was an honor to be invited to share my perspective as an independent teaching artist. I do wish I had been able to attend more of the conference because there were countless workshops I would have loved to sit in on as well as network with teachers while soaking up the Disney brainwashing.

After Thanksgiving, I packed up the suitcase and the car trunk and hit the highway for my first residency of the 2010 – 2011 school year. What an amazing 10 days with middle schoolers. I was invited into a wider variety of classes this year, my sixth in visiting this school. I was with literacy classes to support stronger reading and writing skills, standard English classes, enriched English classes with advanced students, and several self-contained special education classes. We did so much together. Some of the students worked with my premise of reading poems as if engaged in a video game. Other classes were writing memoir poems utilizing a framework of “Six-Word Memoirs.” Still others were creating persona poems, one class even developed their personas in response to completing S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. This also meant I finally read the novel myself so I could ask pertinent questions. Although this novel is often assigned reading for young people, my secondary education preceded its popularity. But now I have still another tool in my work.

I get to be so creative in this arena. I become not just educator or poet but Game Master, storyteller, confidant, even inspiration sometimes. The only part I don’t love is disciplinarian but there are times when it is necessary. Boundaries must be maintained for the good work to happen. I will outline a few of my favorite moments with these young minds next week. For now, I am nursing the cold that followed me home through the snow last Friday, the general outcome of my return to K-12 classrooms year after year. It is such a rewarding career, one that took me most of my adulthood to achieve. I feel valuable and fulfilled, and quite sniffly.

What's Up with All the Bullying?!

I have started my 2010-2011 teaching season in public schools now that the fall sessions of my university honors course and two adult classes in poetry have been completed. I am working for these first two weeks with middle school students, ten different classes, five per week, and the skill sets for each class vary. This means multiple approaches to language, literacy, reading poems, writing poems, inference, and all the other elements I find ways to include in my conversations with these young minds.

Over the summer, I worked with my colleague and dear friend, Quraysh Ali Lansana, on our book for teachers and teaching artists, Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, and Social Justice in Classroom and Community (scheduled for release in February 2011 by Teachers and Writers Collaborative). In one of our essays, I addressed a clique of 9th grade young women who managed to disrupt their class day after day, not just while I was visiting but throughout the school year.

One of our peer reviewers asked at that time if we were going to touch on the current issues of bullying among young people, since the essay did not speak directly to that point. I did not directly witness these young women acting as bullies but I did see them as reluctant learners who were much more concerned with their own images and interests than educating themselves or allowing others to learn in the classroom environment; for this reason, I did not want to add that element to the essay.

There is a lot of business being generated these days surrounding bullying. This seems to be the big push in schools and the media, supported with key news stories of bullying incidents, many of which focus on sexual preference and gender issues. Tragic as these cases are, bullying is nothing new. In society, we may recognize more ways to act as bullies, especially in the realm of social networking, where there have been a number of cases that have led to desperation and suicides. It is awful.

In my early teens, instead of Facebook and You Tube, we had slam books. Notebooks with students' names on different pages would be circulated among classmates, who would anonymously state how they felt about those named. With the lack of accountability for one's words, it was possible to say horrid things about another. Then, if the student who was "slammed" got the book, that person was faced with all that malice of thought. It was extremely hurtful and often ran under the radar of teachers and administration.

In junior high school, the punches that I experienced daily for weeks as I passed a certain student in the hall between classes also ran under the radar until I stood up for myself and challenged her with the fact that I was not going to retaliate because I help no grudge against her. I said I did not understand why she was trying to get me to fight or why she had singled me out but I was not going to react. If she felt she had to continue hitting me, so be it, but I was not going to raise my hand in return. She stopped. I don't know why. Maybe I was just that strong. She then became a friend in the hallways and class rows, protecting me from other bullies. We lost touch as we moved into high school.

The business of bullying includes books being written, dramatic performances being created and staged in schools, discussions on National Public Radio and in professional development in-services. Many artists who work in schools are totally focusing on this element. Teachers are being guided to include this element of character development into their core curricula. Administrators are struggling to intervene, as are guidance counselors and social workers.

But I contend that bullying is modeled everywhere in our society yet we punish our children and youth for mirroring it in their actions. Our elected officials bully each other on the floors of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as in state legislative bodies. This year's election cycle was nothing but bullying. It was offensive and expensive. More than $3 billion were spent on television ads alone in November elections, obscene amounts of money that could have been spent on so many deficit concerns in this economy.

We witness bullying among the pundits on both sides of the political spectrum to the point of insult to our intelligence. And the bullies are very well paid. Most of us are struggling to keep up and there are radio and television opinion makers being paid $22 - $50 million a year to shoot their mouths off.

We see bullying among adults in sports. We witness it in industry. We see it among nations and we see it among gangs in American neighborhoods, driving communities to huddle in their homes while thugs roam with guns. Then we see the NRA bully our legislators and our Supreme Court into turning a blind eye to justice and reason.

We are witnessing hypocrisy and holding our young people responsible for behaviors that are inundating our culture and experience every day. It must stop and children will not stop being bullies if adults are bullying them to "do as I say, not as I do."

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The weather is turning rapidly toward winter. The trees are baring themselves to the wind and rain. Halloween is just 10 days away and my birthday comfortably slid by last week, leaving smiles and a knowledge that I am blessed with a multitude of friends and beloveds. The garden needs to be prepped for the long winter sleep and I have lost three of my towering maples in the past 2 months. There is much light but it seems somewhat naked in the yard.

So where was that summer?! It was hot this year, that is certain. But I spent most of the season planted in front of a fan and my computer working on a book project. Five years ago, I started to notice that there were so many rich and poignant experiences in the classrooms where I was teaching that I needed to capture them. I started a list of ideas for essays. I found that list one steamy afternoon this summer as I was working on final stages of the draft of the book that will appear this winter.

Approximately 3 years ago, my dear friend, colleague, fellow poet, Quraysh Ali Lansana, suggested that perhaps the seed in my brain for a book on poetry in the classroom would be a terrific collaboration. As is frequently the case, he was correct.

We debated, we scrapped, we drafted, we outlined and researched, and we have a book! Although the planning and first stages moved slowly, once we agreed with Teachers & Writers Collaborative to create this entity and we had publishing contracts, we barged forward at a furious pace.

The summer was a marathon of writing and the most amazing experience of putting words to page from that swirl that is my brain I have ever experienced. Working in collaboration with another writer was quite remarkable as well. 

We completed the draft manuscript with 100 more pages that the contract called for but we agreed with our publisher that it is far better to have more than we need than less. This called for a major amputation after first review from T&W. We managed our "slash and burn" edit from 314 to 197 pages in 4 intense days. There is no way to describe the effort adequately. It was still insanely hot for the Northeast. We kept our tempers. We worked hard. We did it!

The full essays will be repurposed for print in trade journals in the writing, education, and arts-in-education fields. Other sections, paragraphs, sentences, whatever the excess, were either stripped out completely or saved for later. We are already formulating ideas for book two.

The comments are coming in now from our peer reviewers. I admit that I was nervous! It is my first venture in critical writing to this degree. My partner is used to this part. I am relieved to have the affirmations we are receiving, as well as some editorial guidance that will serve the final product.

I see the end of the writing process not far beyond my reach. There are so many to thank, I  cannot even start the list here, beyond my partner, our publisher/editor/ally Amy Swauger and her staff, all those who have read the drafts (both friends and peer reviewers), and the funders who have made the publication possible. I have learned a great deal about negotiation, sharing creativity, and what I believe I have learned from my work thus far. I have discovered how writing in tandem is exhilarating. And frustrating. But it is all worth the effort, and this is a serious understatement.

So now, we will finalize this project and begin a new part of the journey: the promotion of Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community. This will be a game changer in so many ways, not just for me and Q, but we believe for teachers and writers nationwide. We want to share what we have witnessed and how we have delivered poetry to students and teachers for more than three decades between us.  We aspire to providing many professional development sessions. We hope that we sell a lot of books too!

I will keep you posted and next year, I hope to do more gardening.