ALT/space

When I studied at a fine arts high school, our creative writing teacher, Mrs. Trimm, burst into the classroom one Monday, triumphant: she had knocked down the barrier which kept her from finishing her novel.  That Saturday, she woke to the usual stream of what ifs and false starts, of doubts and disagreements, of urges to burn all three hundred pages of her current draft.  She realized she was worrying the piece to death.  She forbade herself from working on her novel.  She got up, cooked breakfast, steeped tea, soaped dishes.  While she pruned her roses, it happened: the break-through she’d been trying to force herself to have.  Suddenly, the solution rushed to her, and she rushed inside to write it.

Now that I’m a teacher myself, I often ask myself what makes a good writing teacher.  Every time, I remember Mrs. Trimm’s classroom.  I think of the three hours we spent writing each day.  We watched her at her desk, pen poised over notebooks, fingers poised over the keyboard.  We then turned to our own notebooks, our own keyboards.  We had a running joke – leave Mrs. Trimm alone! She’s working on her novel – and that joke taught us how to live our lives as writers, taught us so many things: dedication, discipline, passion, pushing through even when we felt like failures, trying and trying and then trying again.

In order to be a good writing teacher, you have to be a good writer.  By “good,” I don’t mean talent, or some ineffable quality like “genius.”  As Mrs. Trimm told us, talent will only get you so far.  Talent won’t sustain you through night-long boxing matches with doubt, or with a mailbox brimful with rejection slips.  Discipline and dedication, however, will. 

If I want to teach my writing students anything, it’s how to keep writing: how to keep the pen sliding across the page and the fingers punching the keyboard, even if you feel like your talent has failed you.

When I walk into the classroom, I think of Mrs. Trimm.  She taught us by showing us, every day, how she did what she did.  The best thing she could do was to treat us like equals, like writers.  I try to do the same.  It isn’t always easy: opening up to a roomful of strangers about your deepest worries and struggles, your dark hours of wavering confidence, writing along with them and reading to them what you wrote, even if you know it’s awful.  It’s enough to make the strongest writer pause at the door of the classroom.  Then I realize that’s exactly the position my students are in. I think of Mrs. Trimm, and how I learned the most when she shared the most, how at those moments she was probably feeling vulnerable, too. 

I take a deep breath.  I walk in, ready to sit and write with a room full of people who will, for the next hour, not be students, but writers, just like me.

 Emma Bolden’s chapbooks include How to Recognize a Lady (part of Edge by Edge, Toadlily Press), The Mariner’s Wife (Finishing Line Press), and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press).  She was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship.  She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.  Contact Emma  www.emmabolden.com  www.theyawp.com

Also by Emma Bolden in ALT/space:
Five Ws and an H: An Exercise to Help Students Explore Their Identities as Writers
Burning the Box: A Teacher Does Her Homework
Share and Share Alike: The TA as Artist Studied
The Teacher’s Nightmare: Or, How Modeling Can Make a Class a Dream
Facing the First Day: What a Writer Can Learn from a Lump of Clay
Giving Voice to Silence: The Poetry Block Exhibit

As a teaching artist, as a human being, I would be lying if I did not say I would love to travel the world, to depart to unknown places to infuse my work and to share my art. There are a host of warm hearts in Sweden and France I would treasure meeting. 

But I am an artist confined physically by concrete, steel and electric wires for 35 years. Sometimes teaching artists must stay put by choice or circumstance, yet their hearts, minds and spirits must still travel.  Somewhere I read you don’t have to travel the world to know the hearts of man.  These days I am not even able to travel past the bars of my own cell.

An officer told me today that a pair of geese came up to the art room fence, honking for me this morning, as loud as fog horns – their voices echoing throughout the corridor. But I will not be there today, at least not physically, because we are on lock-down for I do not know how long. There was a riot yesterday, on the big yard, between some black and brown prisoners.

I will not be allowed out of the cage to run my classes, commune with the birds, or breathe in Mother Earth. So, I focus on the teaching artist fellowships I have through the mail. I have only a few correspondence fellowships with students now, because snail mail has become almost obsolete.

Thus, on this lock-down, I’ll mainly read and ponder books.  I’ll cultivate new ideas through my studies, writing and meditation. I’ll give my spirit, heart, mind, and soul fodder to create lessons in the moment, like jazz. The lessons will come out when needed in the future. Tomorrow will bring what it brings.

I’ll paraphrase something Rilke wrote in Letter to a Young Poet: There are endless paths and things inside us – place, stories, poems and songs.  There are memories in our hearts, bodies and souls that we can naturally draw upon to teach art and transcend structures.

Art, I think, must be personal, and at times very personal.  I believe my art must show personal for others to both see inside themselves and feel their own flow, and travel internally to unknown depths.  Everyone has their own way of seeing things, and the arts, by being personal, allow or inspire others to be aware of that fact.

When I ponder Rilke or Langston Hughes they inspire me not to imitate them, but to be more of myself through my own inner travels.

Note from the author: This piece was inspired by Whose Reality? by Malke Rosenfeld, and Linda Bruning’s The Road and its Reality.
 

Spoon Jackson has been in the art world and in prison for over twenty years.  He is an internationally known poet, writer, actor and native flute player.  His poems are collected in Longer Ago and have been featured in films, plays, articles, books and music suites.  He has won four PEN awards.  He is featured in two films by Michael Wenzer, At Night I Fly and Three Poems by Spoon Jackson, which won awards in five countries.  Spoon does not have any fancy degrees; he mentors youth and young at heart from life experiences and realness.  He knows that inspiration is organic.  His newest book By Heart, was co-authored with Judith Tannenbaum and published in 2010.  Contact Spoon at www.realnessnetwork.blogspot.com or www.spoonjackson.com

Also by Spoon Jackson in ALT/space:
Moving Past Hostile Classes
Deadlines
Pockets of Light

WHAT: The journalist’s six cornerstone questions.  An idea I had one day: what if those questions were flipped inward and then outward?  What if I had my students ask themselves how those six questions relate to their lives as writers?  An exercise.  An inquiry.  A way for students to explore who they are as artists.  A way for a teaching artist to introduce herself to her students.  A way for students to learn about each other.  A way for students to learn about themselves.

HOW:  List the six questions on the board: who, what, where, why, when, and how.  Explain that you’re not going to explain much more than that: each question can mean different things to different students, and that’s fine.  The answer to where could be a physical space, like a desk, or a psychological space, like in anger.  The answer to how can describe the physical act – with a super fine Uni-Ball pen in an unlined Moleskine – or the metaphysical act – by leafing through the card catalog of memory and image that is my mind.  The question can mean what the student needs it to mean.  So can the answer.

WHEN: The first day of class, in lieu of or as a supplement to introductions.  The last day of class, as a way for students to reflect upon their growth over the course of the semester.  Outside of class, hopefully, and years after the class is over, even more hopefully: over coffee, after dinner, after waking up in the middle of the night, as a way to gauge one’s development as an artist after one is no longer a student.

WHO: The students stepping into a writing class for a first time who needs to realize that they’re already writers.  The graduating students who need to remember why they started writing.  The teacher who needs to reflect upon who she is as an artist.  The artist who needs to reflect upon who she is as a teacher.

WHERE: In the classroom, that generic space in which every teacher, professor, class, student must learn how to speak and write and learn.  Posted on student blogs or class blogs.  Printed and push-pinned to a cork board behind a writing desk.  Taped to the wall of a studio.  Folded and tucked into a pocket, a wallet.  Posted on Post-Its in a dorm room.

WHY:  Because, first and foremost, asking oneself six questions about one’s life as a writer means first making a very important statement: I am a writer.  Because making this statement provides a student with confidence, with encouragement.  Because, in a writing class, students are required to risk and push themselves and share what they might prefer keep secret, which requires confidence and encouragement.  Because even the most experienced writer needs to take stock of their process and product from time to time.  Because knowing yourself is vital to expressing yourself.  Because you can’t have answers if you don’t ask questions.

 Emma Bolden’s chapbooks include How to Recognize a Lady (part of Edge by Edge, Toadlily Press), The Mariner’s Wife (Finishing Line Press), and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press).  She was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship.  She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.  Contact Emma  www.emmabolden.com  www.theyawp.com

Also by Emma Bolden in ALT/space:
Burning the Box: A Teacher Does Her Homework
Share and Share Alike: The TA as Artist Studied
The Teacher’s Nightmare: Or, How Modeling Can Make a Class a Dream
Facing the First Day: What a Writer Can Learn from a Lump of Clay
Giving Voice to Silence: The Poetry Block Exhibit

In 1988, after I performed Pozzo in Waiting for Godot before international audiences at San Quentin State Prison, my confidence and belief in myself as a poet, artist and human being rose and flowed with inspiration like a thawing creek in spring.  I wanted to share openly and freely whatever gifts I have as an artist and, hopefully, inspire others to share their gifts. 

I became a teacher’s aide.  I ran small writing, reading and acting groups in the 1990’s at Donovan State Prison and at California Men’s Colony Prison.  I remember going into hostile classrooms to recite poetry and Shakespeare and to read my published work.  A lot of the cats in the classrooms did not know what to make of me.  I could see who in the hell do he think he is in some faces.  When I introduced myself and told the class how long I had been in prison, some of their masks fell down.  Some students with hostile gazes turned away from me and kicked it with their friends.  Some maintained their stoic prisoner look throughout the reading, while others ignored me all together.

I kept on reciting, and the teacher in each class would let me know how much he or she enjoyed my presentation.  I answered student and teacher questions at the end of the readings and  I let the classes know how important it is to ask questions.

Back then, in the 90’s, in those hostile classes, I did touch some hearts and souls with each poetry reading.  I kept going back to perform in the classrooms, and more and more of the guys came around to liking my work.  My walk as a teaching artist grew around CMC. I became accepted as a poet and a cool weirdo.  Some cats shared their first poems with me. Sometimes, even now, guys come up to me to tell me how my work inspired them back then. 

Today I have my own creative writing classes. Word about my work and our prisoner-run-and-taught art programs here at New Folsom has gotten around the yard, the prison system, and some outside local communities.  It has also been documented in film, in my book By Heart (co-Authored with Judith Tannenbaum), and in my poetry book Longer Ago.

These days, here at New Folsom, word is that to get into one of my writing classes quickly you must audition.  When I walk into the prison yard, people from all colors, gangs, and backgrounds come up to me.  Some recite a poem, verse or rap.  Some tell me they are writers, poets, singers, rappers, pimps, gangsters or players.  Some express how tight their lyrics and prose are, and that they have written articles, songs, poems and books.  I listen and then I let them know I am open to reading their writing; I tell them to show me their skills, not tell me.  Some people do bring their text to me at the gate where I feed the birds.  Some tell me they have poems and books in their heads and I encourage them to bring it out on paper.

There are long waiting lists for most of our classes.  The turnover rate in the classes due to lockdowns, prison politics, transgressions and transfers can be swift and sad.  Before I even finished my first post for ALT/space [in October 2011] the student highlighted in this piece, Wikiri Ologun, was transferred, and not because he had done anything wrong.  Wikiri had chosen to walk a path of creativity.  He wanted to stay in this environment that is open to the creative process.  He knew that New Folsom is the only spot in the California prison system to have a creative arts program.  Peer pressure and prison politics on other prison yards that have no arts will are intense, and the art can wither without fellowship.  But we keep creating.

Remember

When I walk or fly
out of this place
no one will remember
how the birds came to me
as friends and shared bread

No one will remember
how I planted a garden
of flowers and spices
in a space where growth
is prohibited

No one will remember
the Shakespeare and my poems
I read in hostile classes

I should have known
that once the trees
were all chopped down
like unarmed soldiers
I would be transferred.

©2011 Spoon Jackson

Spoon Jackson has been in the art world and in prison for over twenty years.  He is an internationally known poet, writer, actor and native flute player.  His poems are collected in Longer Ago and have been featured in films, plays, articles, books and music suites.  He has won four PEN awards.  He is featured in two films by Michael Wenzer, At Night I Fly and Three Poems by Spoon Jackson, which won awards in five countries.  Spoon does not have any fancy degrees; he mentors youth and young at heart from life experiences and realness.  He knows that inspiration is organic.  His newest book By Heart, was co-authored with Judith Tannenbaum and published in 2010.  Contact Spoon at www.realnessnetwork.blogspot.com or www.spoonjackson.com

Also by Spoon Jackson in ALT/space:
 Deadlines
Pockets of Light

Where are you going, where have you been: though they’re widely known as the title of a harrowing short story by Joyce Carol Oates, those eight words describe exactly what I want my students to think about in their last assignment for my class, the self-reflection: where they have been as writers and where they are going, where those two roads intersect, and what they’ve learned from a semesters’ worth of readings, exercises, class discussions, and peer critiques of their work. 

In college-level writing classes, these assignments are so common as to be rote requirements; most writing professors automatically assign them – myself included.  Nonetheless, I am struck every time I read a student’s self-reflection with wonder at the learning process.  I’m struck with my students’ abilities to change, to improve, to embrace and incorporate new ideas.

This semester was a bumpy one, as any professor’s first semester at a new institution is bound to be.  Every first semester seems like a test: the students, wary of a newcomer, are often resistant until the professor earns their trust, and the professor herself must gauge for the first time what the students need.  In this semester’s wake, I felt it best to complete my own assignment, to see what I’d learned in my own self-reflection.  I learned this semester the most difficult thing not just for any writer or teacher or artist to learn, but for any human being to learn: not everyone is going to like you, especially when you’re challenging them, forcing them not only to think outside of their box but to take a match and burn that box to ash. 

When I think back to where I have been in terms of my own educational experiences, I realize that I learned the most from teachers who I at first, well, didn’t like very much – because they pushed me past my comfort zone, because – I now realize – they cared enough about my mind, my writing, and my art to push me to take risks, to never accept the status quo, to change and learn and think and re-think and always, always move further. 

This has helped me a great deal to see where I am going, both as a teacher and as a writer.  When I go into my classroom, I will come from a place of mercy and sympathy – or, rather, empathy – for the difficult task both my students and I are doing.  I’ll be less defensive and more willing to share my own struggles as a writer so that my students can learn from them.  After all, we are all in that room together for three hours a week for the very same reason: to write, to learn, to grow and improve and write again.  This may not be an easy process, but if we approach others and ourselves with empathy and understanding, it’ll make the road from where we have been to where we are going a little bit smoother.

Emma Bolden’s chapbooks include How to Recognize a Lady (part of Edge by Edge, Toadlily Press), The Mariner’s Wife (Finishing Line Press), and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press).  She was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship.  She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.  Contact Emma  www.emmabolden.com  www.theyawp.com

Also by Emma Bolden in ALT/space:
Share and Share Alike: The TA as Artist Studied
The Teacher’s Nightmare: Or, How Modeling Can Make a Class a Dream
Facing the First Day: What a Writer Can Learn from a Lump of Clay
Giving Voice to Silence: The Poetry Block Exhibit