Molly Wingate

 

Look at all the people and stuff in this short video of Poetry and Pottery! We gather together artists, potters, and writers for a summer afternoon’s event for most weeks in the summer. And this is what it looks like — tourists, residents of the Pikes Peak region and homeless folks all come together for art’s sake. And for fun!

This is a free event for the participants. The good folks at the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce, Planning Office, City Council and Arts Council along with private donors and our corporate collaborator, Manitou Brewing, make this community building event a regular thing on Wednesday afternoons, 12 -2. We even serve healthy soup, if you are hungry.

Warriors 1^st Ribbon Cutting Poem

Veterans and entrepreneurs need resilience

To avoid damage or falling prey to manipulation

God helps us envision perseverance and abundance

In the face of depression and suicide

And all sorts of heavy stuff.

 

Kindness leads to success.

Love gingersnap pizza (that’s unique!)

Be fearless! Click, click, click

You are royalty

Understand that your creativity will heal you.

Be curious and intrigued.

 

Warriors First celebrated the holiday season AND getting their own 501c3 letter.  Partners gathered to toast the creation of their own nonprofit organization,  to meet each other, and to enjoy fabulous coffee. Poetry Heals collected words from the participants and created this poem. A wonderful night!

Poetry Heals is about of using poetry writing to process and start healing trauma, but we can produce a product, too. Our first poetry collection includes poems by all sorts of people who sat down and wrote during our free, summer-long art event, Poetry and Pottery. Residents, street people and tourists. Spurned lovers, joyful grandmas, silly sisters. Everyone is welcome, that’s our motto.

My idea of poetry  

is sitting out in the woods

listening to the stream running

a bobwhite a bobbin

a swallow a swallowing

and a state trooper on the bullhorn

and down the hill

we’re going.

by Kelly

 

I love reading these poems and hearing again the voices of people taking the time to reflect on their lives or our writing prompts — sometimes both. What surprised me is how other people react to the book when they pick it up.

“I really can’t put it down; look at me!” said a psychologist I was talking to about bringing Poetry Heals to veterans in legal trouble.

“Here’s a picture of my teenage son reading your book,” texted a Mom who bought the book at our third birthday party.

“Well this is cool,” said an independent bookstore owner from San Francisco.

People become absorbed in the poems. These are not fine art poems. Most of them are free verse, and all of them are real. “No roses are red, violets are blue” as I always say at the start of a workshop. I’m known for “giving the eye” when people are skirting the issues in their poems.  These poems can get gritty, and they seem always to bring relief to the writers.  A little magic lives on these pages.

So, I you’d like your own copy, please click here to our swag page. You will become absorbed in the poems and support Poetry Heals.  What a deal!

I had written a writing prompt on the white board before I went to fetch the students for the after school writing group. Landmark Community School is a safe place for teens in recovery from addiction. The kids are terrific.

“What I would l like to change?” was the prompt. Jason and Aubrey* sat down on one side of the table and I across from them, a typical teacher spot. I mentioned that there was a prompt on the board behind them and that we could write a group poem if they liked. Jason picked up the marker, walked straight to the board, and wrote that he wanted to change the laws about medical marijuana. Then he handed Aubrey the marker. She wrote “the juvenile justice system.” Jason stepped up, added numbers to the list, and added #3. This went on until there were 13 items listed. Including “my resistance to change,” and “schools thinking everyone learns the same way.”

The teacher, me, didn’t move. I said, “Thank you, can you be more specific? Help me understand.”

The students had taken over and used the opportunity of a blank white board for their own purposes. And we had a poem of sorts. When they wrote on their own, one used a fill-in-the-blank template, while the other wrote freely. She didn’t want to share her work, so I asked her to read it to herself.

“Make sure you’ve been concrete, get to something you can pinch.” She bowed her head, scratched out some words, replaced them. Soon there were arrows to the margins with words racing down the edge. She looked up. “If you are taking the trouble to write about something, you might as well get down to it,” I said. She bowed her head again. And when she lifted it, said, “I like it.”

Jason wanted to read his new poem while Aubrey quietly found her folder and tucked in her poem. I will keep my promise not to read what is in their folders without their permission. Jason now has at least one poem without the word “fuck” in it. “See you next time.”

*These are not the students’ real names.