Writing Under the Influence

I was of two minds about attending the writing under the influence workshop. Not because I didn’t see the value in writing workshops; I’ve participated in enough of them over the years – as student and teacher – to deeply appreciate the value of flexing your muscles lest they atrophy. No, my hesitation had to do with how my once promising day had collapsed on itself. I couldn’t stand the thought of being around people just then. But I decided to chance it anyway. And not only did my writing muscles get a work out, my spirits were lifted.

Tanya Evanson’s ice breaker exercises put you off kilter enough to get you out of your head and then Rumi, Rumi, Rumi…and then group writing…oh how I hate group writing exercises…because my creative route goes brain-heart-spirit to fingers…group work short circuits the path with a detour to the tongue…and as it happened I didn’t verbalize much (read: at all) while the group writing chain linked and clinked itself together…truth is …by the time my puzzle piece of words lined themselves up someone had already jumped in and the chain had another link…always a beat behind, I held my tongue…but then we were sent our separate ways to reshape this chain into something of our own making…this part I loved…this part flowed heart-brain-spirit-fingers…I edit and write for a living so it felt almost like second hand…but then this was no simple edit… no, the words started reforming into something entirely new…and I felt alive in the process…and that gave me the key to the poem…by the time I was done I was quite eager to share it…so eager in fact that my heart was beating a wild tattoo against my rib cage…I could hear it…truth be told…the rhythm was also driven by my body’s instinctive rejection of public speaking …I do it, have done it multiple times, will again …as soon as this coming weekend…but boy do I hate it…boy do I fear it…but true to my mantra…feel the fear, but do it anyway…I leap into it…so I decided to do just that…I volunteered to go first. And because we had to be creative in our presentation I decided to incorporate my yoga (breathing) practice into the exercise. It fit the poem after all and was less about performance and more about melding with the audience. Once I was done, I could relax and enjoy the rest of the presentations and didn’t even think about my craptastic day again until I stepped outside of the cocoon of the workshop and back into the real world.

This was the chain from the group exercise:

Live in silence

Close your eyes

Speak only to yourself

Hear without ears

Feel without touching

Sense without being

This beauty is only for the blind

For those who can see won’t understand

Follow your thoughts

To their rest

I’m unable to speak

But I can use my hands

Truth cannot fill an overflowing cup

Sense the spirit that lives outside

I’m glad for this glass door that’s hiding me from deception

Ask no questions

My body shows it all

Guided by the feetless walk

Upon winding paths of the mind

Trees move not

Hear not sound

Mind sees and hears all

 

My redraft (entitled Truth):

Close your eyes

(a beat)

Close your eyes

Speak only to yourself

Without ears

Without words

Absent sight and sound

Live in silence

Come alive to yourself

 

The beauty you shield

Is only for the blind

For only those without

Sight

Can understand

Understand yourself

 

Follow your thoughts

Use your feet

Use your hands

Do not speak

Let your truth fill this cup

So it overflows

Swirls around you

Like spirits’ touch

Do not flinch

From it

Do not hide

From yourself

Live in silence

Come alive to yourself

 

The water becomes the mirror

In which you

See yourself

No more deception

No need for hiding

Come alive to yourself

Swim in this truth

Follow the currents

Where they

Lead

Let your instincts guide

You

Trust yourself

Here where

There is

No sound

No sound

No sound

Only you

In the silence

Speaking truth

To yourself

 

 

Blind one-word evaluation (one from each member of the group):

“wonderful”

“Lilting”

“Abstract”

“Creative”

“Harmonious”

“Inspiration”

“Lustrous”

“Gripping”

“Fantastic!!!”

“Direct”

“Entertaining”

 

See also another workshop participant’s experience of the experience.

 

As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Who made the short list?

UPDATE – for an open letter to Wadadli Pen finalists (and all budding writers), go here.

 After the first round of judging, these are the names of the writers tapped by one or more of the judges in this year’s Wadadli Pen Challenge. Each entry is evaluated blind by at least two judges in round one and then by the chief judge in round 2 after which they will be returned to the respective writers for final editing. Who’ll make the final cut? That’ll be decided in the second round of judging and revealed during the awards ceremony. These are the ones still in the running (you may notice some familiar names *see links* from previous Wadadli Pen Challenges).

12 and younger

Chammaiah Ambrose (Sunnyside)

Vega Armstrong (St. Nicholas)

Juliet Browne (Villa Primary)

Zuri Holder (Antigua Grammar School)

Rhea Watkins (St. John’s Catholic Primary)

13 to 17

Asha Graham (Antigua Girls High School)

Michaela Harris (Antigua Girls High School)

Isheba Simon (Antigua State College)

18 to 35

Danielle M. Benjamin

Daryl George

Latoya Aretha Honore

Arati Jagdeo

Jamila H. K. Salankey

Latisha Walker-Jacobs

Fun While It Lasted

‘Fun while it Lasted’ is the topic for the Wadadli Pen Open-Mic to be held at the Royal Palm Branch on Friars Hill Rd on Saturday, 13th November 2010 starting 7:30pm. All are invited to come, share and listen.

Yeah Yeah for Ya Ya

I wrote this after attending the Antigua launch of Chadd’s cumberbatch Ya Ya Surfeit back in August 2010. The option to publish wasn’t picked up by any of the usual suspects. But, hey, that’s what blogs are for. Here then are reflections on a beautfiul night. Photos by Marcella Andre.

That's Marcella, far right; yes, she's talented like that...the photog and the subject...also pictured, far left the night's emcee Brenda Lee Browne, artist extraordinaire Heather Doram next to her, y yo.

By Joanne C. Hillhouse

Ya Ya Surfeit; translation, plenty chat. When Montserratian Chadd Cumberbatch

Chadd

 launched the book here recently there was plenty of something else; laughter – I mean, laugh until you belly hurt you laughter.

The Best of Books @ Royal Palm launch was, frankly, not well attended  but it was full in every way that counted.

The poetry collection, which enjoyed a theatrical launch at home earlier in the summer, travels well. It helps that Cumberbatch, no stranger to either stage or movie lights, brought to the reading, the ease and charisma of a natural storyteller. The effortless chemistry between Cumberbatch and radio personality Marcella Andre, who also participated in the Montserrat launch, was a plus.

The stripped down presentation and smaller venue, meanwhile, allowed for a certain intimacy not just with the performers but the words. Certainly, it allowed even those of us who’ve read this poetry collection and witnessed the coming alive of favourite pieces at the previous launch, hear the words as if for the first time; I mean really hear them, and be tickled or moved anew as a result.

As with the book itself, the pieces chosen for the Antigua launch were well ordered, beginning, rightly, with the reflective Ascent to Grace before picking up the pace with the defiant Emancipation and the caustic Fences – the latter capturing well the attitudes of some to the all-a-we-is-one-family sentiment and having fun with the words. “So hall you bauxite”, therefore, emerges as the kiss-off it is when dependent only on the sound of the words for the meaning, a reminder that so many of the pieces in this collection, while they read well, really feel meant for the stage or some sort of audio recording. At other times the visual is so clear – “with a flick of her plastic, blonde weave” – the layers of meaning immediately reveal themselves. That’s from Buy Local, which ends with the sarcastic, “It is her religion to take communion at Western Union”.

Cumberbatch went to great lengths to reiterate – perhaps overmuch – that not all the pieces reflect his lived experiences. But certainly Daily Bread, the seed of which was planted during a tedious staff meeting at his day job, is. It was Andre’s favourite piece and she declared  we could all relate to:

“Lord de wuk

De never-ending-forever day wuk

De hustle

De sweat

De back and forth

De forth and back…

…

And the meeting

And the other meeting

And the meeting to plan the next meeting

About the briefing

About the memo

Re de missive from de Ministry

Cause de Boss say

De minister say…”

You get the idea.

And for everyone who’s ever been to a pageant, Priscilla, featuring “…Peggy daughter, the one wey look like one ‘O’” was no less relatable, easily earning the biggest laughs of the night – the kind of laugh where you swear somebody’s about to tek een. Well, to be honest, the competition for biggest laugh of the night tug-o-warred between this and the three-man skit On the Block which wondered, what do women want?

The pieces in what Cumberbatch described as the “love zone” earned a different kind of laughter, more subdued, more the laughter of commiseration; I’ve-been-there-I-know-what-that’s-like kind of laughter. From Monday to On Rumpled Sheets to Crescent to Grey to Confessions of a Love Sick Fool, the pieces tracked love’s slow unraveling: such as “Tonight I’ll slip away from you and you will never know because you don’t see me anymore” (from Wakening) and “I fell hard like a rock/hard like granite/hard like diamond/heavy like a stone/and I shattered…like glass” (from I Fell).

The encore came via the poet’s reading of one of his favourite pieces, Conversation with Cheese. It was a reminder of the real life relatability, layers of meaning, and sly humour of the well-worth-buying collection. In it, a young boy asks a Rasta – Cheese? – why he smokes weed. The answer comes via the Bible and, specifically, how Moses received the epiphany that led him to Pharaoh’s door precipitating the Israelites’ exit from Egypt: “through the burning bush”.

Chadd signs copies for his fans including Antiguan artist/actress Heather D.

Spotlight: Sylvanus Barnes

Pictured, Antiguan poet, Sylvanus Barnes signs copies of Barney’s Wit ‘n Wisdom which includes radio favourites like ‘Harp of Gold’. More recently, he launched the two volume Fling Stone inna Hog Pen. Here’s an excerpt from my coverage of the launch in June 2010:

“Long after we are gone, it will be recorded that Sylvanus Barnes was a great poet,” said Education Director Jacintha Pringle, who described the verses in Fling Stone inna Hog Pen volumes 1 and 2, and Barnes’ body of work generally, as both “witty and deep.”

@ launch of Fling Stone inna Hog Pen

Now, go here  http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=33906 to read the whole thing.

Black and Beautiful by Hilesha S. Humphreys

[winner 18 to 35 age category 2010]

Deep within lies the unseen,

The Black that is me.

Not the simple skin, but below, between,

The crevices, the depths of who I am and shall be.

The strength of body and mind handed down through, and by blood.

This hidden pearl is the glow I wear.

A misunderstood joy, peace in the times of tear.

It is hope running in the red of my black

That which marks grace and endurance in my back;

The outward and inward curves; defiance, submission, but ne’er breaking.

Beautiful, is the diversity of the black;

Standing, solid African, in appearance, in voice,

Sitting, mixed with the world’s content,

The black beauty rises.