Mindy Hardwick's Blog, page 13

When the Plans Don’t Work

On Saturday, I taught a poetry workshop to young writers. The workshop was advertised for ages 8-12 and I had about ten kids who were between ages 7-9.  I had intended to work with the writers on an I Come From Poem and show them some Button Poet performances in order to get them ready for  the Poetry Coffeehouse which takes place on Saturday, April 23 from 2:00-4:00 at the Redmond Library.

However, as soon as the kids were gathered around the table, I knew I was going to need a whole different plan. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they could do an I Come From Poem and have great material, it was just the energy in the room seemed a lot more playful and fun then what I had planned. I traditionally do workshops where the focus is on getting kids who have unheard stories, such as those in juvenile detention, to tell their stories. It’s not these workshops aren’t playful and fun, and I do incorporate some play into them, but they tend to be a bit more serious. It’s not easy for a lot of the kids who have not been heard to trust that they can tell their stories and someone will listen to them.

But this group on Saturday, seemed bubbling with energy and life and something more joyful was needed.

So while the librarian was introducing me and raving about my workshops my mind searched for what we could do that would reach the audience in front of me and still accomplish the goal of working on performance poetry.

As the introductions wrapped up, suddenly it came to me Shel Silverstein. I quickly turned to Jenn and asked if she had some Shel Silverstein books in the library. Thankfully, she came back with the one I was hoping for, Where the Sidewalk Ends.

I turned to my favorite poem, “Sick” and began reading. The group was hooked. Many of them were not as familiar as I thought they might be with Shel Silverstein’s poems and enjoyed hearing the poem.

After I read, “Sick,” I asked the kids to write an excuse poem. I’ve done this exercise before in workshops with young writers and it’s always a big hit. We make up excuses for why we can’t do a chore we are supposed to do.

As the kids wrote, I thumbed through the book of poems and picked out two others we could do “copy change’ with. Copy change is a method of taking a published poem and mirroring the tone or theme in your own poem. I often allow the kids to use one line as a jump off place to get their own poems going.

I found two other poems, “Someone Swallowed the Baby” and “Afraid.” I used “Someone Swallowed the Baby” to ask the kids to write a poem about a time they did something and didn’t want to admit it. We talked about the picture book, “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” which is told through the point of view of the wolf who believes he was framed. I often use  this with older teens and kids in detention with a lot of success.

Then, our last poem was “Afraid” which is a simple poem where the first line uses the name of the poet and then the poet tells what they are afraid of. The last line ends with a please not to do something which will increase their fear.

The last ten minutes we practiced standing tall like trees, projecting our voices and reading slowly in order to prepare for the Coffeehouse Poetry.

It was a fun workshop and reminded me the skill in being a teaching artist relies on responding in the moment to who the audience is and not insisting that my predetermined plan will be the one we follow!

 

 

 

Slam, Jam Poetry Workshop

On Saturday I’m teaching a Slam, Jam Poetry Workshop to young writers, ages 8-12. It’s being held at the Redmond Library from 1:00-3:00 p.m. and is free to young writers.  We are going to be talking about writing poems which can be performed, trying our hands at a few poems drawn from life experience and those things which fire us up, and then looking at how to perform the poems we write for the Poetry Coffeehouse which takes place on Saturday, April 23.

I’m going to be sharing with the young writers some of the poems written and performed by Button Poetry poets.

The following are poems I’ll be sharing in the workshop:

 

What Kind of Asian Are You?

Selfie

The Bridge

Brown Girl

 

Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop Winner

 

Congratulations to NJ Kinny who is the Lucky Lerechaun Giveaway Hop winner at my blog! Check your email for notification of your three winning Nora Roberts books!

Happy Reading!

Spring Workshops and Author Events

I will be teaching a couple workshops this spring for both adults and teens as well as giving a public reading of an excerpt of my short story, “The Girl In Orange” which is written from my experience with the teens at Denney Juvenile Justice Center poetry workshop.

Spunky, Daring and Brave: Writing Characters for Children’s Books

She’s spunky, daring and brave. He’s imaginative, fearless and smart. Who are these characters we love in children’s chapter books, middle grade and young adult novels? And how do we create a character who is so irresistible, young readers won’t want the story to end? In this class we’ll explore what makes us love the child character by finding a character’s voice through writing character monologues, exploring their hiding spaces with setting maps and discovering their secrets to success by brainstorming possibilities for sequels and spin-off stories. Students will leave with a spunky child character ready to jump into a story and multiple story ideas for that character.

May 12 and May 19. 1:00-3:00 p.m. Schack Art Center, Everett, WA. Register here

Slam, Jam Poetry Workshop: A Writing Workshop for Tweens and Teens

Join us in this interactive workshop where we write poetry about people, places and events which fire us up, inspire and fuel our deepest hopes and dreams. We’ll explore how to take a poem from it’s raw form and turn it into something which can be performed for an audience at a poetry slam. The workshop includes both writing and coaching for the slam contest which will take place on Saturday, April 23 at the library.

April 2, 1:00-3:30 p.m., Redmond Public Library. Free.

 

Public Reading of “Girl in Orange”

Also, my short story, “Girl in Orange” was accepted for publication with Rain Literary Magazine which is produced by students at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. The short story was drawn from my experience running a poetry workshop at Denney Juvenile Justice Center. A public reading will be held on May 20, 2016 at Clatsop Community College.

 

Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!! This month, I’m participating in the Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop hosted by BookHounds. You can find the whole list of blogs participating in the hop here.

I thought it’d be fun to give away a couple of Nora Robert’s books which are set in Ireland. So without further ado…..I’m going to be giving away all three of the Gallaghers of Ardmore Series to one lucky winner. The books will all be ebook. (International or US).  In order to be entered in the Giveaway please leave me a comment about the luckiest thing that happened to you. Please be sure to leave your email address. I will announce the winner on this blog on March 24, 2016.

You can find the whole list of blogs participating in the Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop here.

 

 

Breakfast at Sally’s

The last speaker I heard at the Search for Meaning reader’s conference was Richard LeMieux, author of Breakfast at Sally’s. Richard’s book tells the journey to homelessness and back out again.

He shares the heartbreaking story of how he is ready to end his life by jumping off a bridge, but his small white dog, Willow, saves him by scratching and clawing on the window of the car where he has left her, and he returns to take care of her and begins his journey to the Salvation Army where he finds help.

Richard is the Executive Director of The Willow and Richard Project which is a non-profit whose mission is to inspire, assist, and empower people affected by homelessness in America through education and practical charitable endeavors locally, regionally and nationally. Their current project is to bring together a homeless benefit concert where talented homeless artists in various media can showcase their talents and where those who have overcome homelessness to move into mainstream society can tell their success stories.

I heard Richard tell his story at the Redmond Library a few years ago and it was just as moving the second time. He speaks often to groups and if you’d like to have him speak to your group, he can be reached at guycoe @ msn. com

 

 

Dreamland

One of the morning keynote speakers at the Search for Meaning Conference was Sam Quinones, a journalist and author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.

 

 

Dreamland tells of the rise of the prescription drug epidemic, starting with OxyContin, that has lead to an unprecedented increase in heroin use in particular in our suburbs among white, middle and upper middle class young people.

I was particularly interested in this book and talk. When I wrote my young adult novel, Weaving Magic, I wanted to explore what happened to a teen addict who was trying to stay sober.

I’d had a lot of personal experience with sober teen alcoholics from my own years as a teen and twenty-something, but right away I knew my main character, Christopher, was addicted to drugs, not alcohol. At the time I wrote the story, I was volunteering in the poetry workshop at the juvenile detention center and more and more I was seeing teens hooked on prescription drugs. They may have gotten them from friends who had wisdom teeth pulled, or maybe needed the drug for an athletic injury, but had quickly become hooked.

One of the things Quinones talked about was how the epidemic has hit our suburban communities. At a time when teens have had more than enough, from large homes to large cars, we have isolated ourselves in those suburban communities by driving into our driveways at home, going into the garage and into our large media rooms and bedrooms. We are more connected by technology yet more disconnected from the people around us. The neighbors next door to us.

Quinones mentions how you can drive down suburban streets and not see one child playing outside or riding a bike.

The book is not an easy read as it asks us to look at those things we want to pretend do not exist in the safety of our middle and upper middle class suburbs. And yet, when I look around my own community, the rise of tent cities filled with addicts in our greenbelts is hard to deny and with it has also come an increase in crime in a community which called itself a “safe bedroom community.”

An article just this week published in the Everett Herald talks about the rise in heroin use and there is a public meeting in Mulkiteo on March 15 at 6 p.m.

There are no easy answers, but Quinones says the first begins with walking outside and getting to know your neighbors and the children who live on your street. It begins by rebuilding our communities. And the other night, on an unusually sunny early spring evening, I was happy to see a game of pick-up basketball with four teens going on at the top of my driveway where a basketball hoop has been set up while further up the street, a group of elementary school children rode bikes and tossed a ball back and forth.

You can find a great NPR interview with Quinones here.

 

 

Where the River Bends: Considering Forgiveness in the Lives of Prisoners

One of the authors I heard speak at the Search for Meaning Conference in Seattle was Michael T. McRay who wrote, Where the River Bends: Considering Forgiveness in the Lives of Prisoners.

I was very interested in this talk as my work with the teens in juvenile detention and writing my own memoir, Kids in Orange: Voices from Juvenile Detention, has taken me into this question often.

McRay talked a lot about dismantling the enemy by hearing their stories. He talked about the danger of the single story in which we only hear a single story about another person or country. In order to hear all stories, McRay talked about the need to get in close proximity to the enemy–and yes, in the case of prisoners, this means we go into the prisons and sit while they tell their stories whether orally or through poetry, music, theater, literature or story. Next, he talked about having the curiosity to understand the why of what happened. McRay said that more than anything, victims need the truth. They need the why something happened and we get to this why by hearing the stories of those who committed the crime. And he talked about having humility and looking at how we might be wrong in our assumptions about a particular group of people.

One thing McRay mentioned, which I have also experienced in my work with teens in detention, is that the majority of prisoners have been abused as children. McRay said, “Trauma that is not transformed is transferred. Energy moves from one thing to another and when we receive the trauma and we don’t do the work to transform it, we will put it off to the next person or place.”

Finally, McRay said that it’s not giving voice to the voiceless, they do have a voice. It’s giving voice to the unheard.

If you’d like to learn more about a program McRay’s works on in Tennessee, Ten X 9 story program, a community program in which ten people have nine minutes to tell a story, go here.

There is also a great TED talk, “The Danger of A Single Story.”

 

 

 

Search for Meaning Conference

This past weekend, I attended a fabulous readers conference at Seattle University called Search For Meaning. The one-day event is held yearly and features over 50 best-selling authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.. The festival offers general sessions, keynote presentations, book signings, and interactive experiences. Readers spend a day with some of the world’s most influential authors and scholars while reflecting on their own ability to contribute to a more just and humane world.

I’m going to be doing a series of posts which highlights some of the authors and their books that I heard while attending the festival.

This year, I was drawn to the festival because one of the authors speaking was Julia Cameron who wrote, The Artist Way. My creative journey began with that book where I learned about killing my creative monsters, identifying my blocks to creativity and the all important morning pages.

There are certain people whose work has guided my path since the mid-1990’s and Julia Cameron is one of them. Being able to see her talk in person was fabulous. Julia believes we are all creative and the key is to unlocking what blocks us from expressing that creativity.

Julia’s talk focused on the three tools which she emphasis are key to creativity.

Morning Pages--Write three pages by hand, every morning. Morning pages help you get the clutter out of your head, the to-do list out of your head, but more important, they create a conscious contact with your higher self that knows the next direction you need to take, even if it might be a little scary. The emphasis is on these must be written longhand because of the connection between the emotions and the physical act of writing. I’ve gotten a little lax with these, but I do often use them to clear my mind in the morning.
Artist Dates--Artist dates are when you go by yourself into the world and explore something you have never done. This does not have to be a  big trip. It’s as simple as an hour at a Farmer’s Market or a local museum. The key is to get out by yourself so you have the ability to hear that still small voice inside and explore new places. My artist date this weekend was a day at the Sewing Expo where I learned how to sew a pair of slippers with cuddle soft fabric.
Walk–The third and final tool is a 20 minute walk three or four times a week. It is the walk which helps solidify the ideas and thoughts from the other two tools, artist dates and morning pages. This is my favorite thing to do when I’m on the Oregon Coast.

You can enjoy a video of Julia Cameron talking about creativity and the Artist Way here:

 

 

 

Character Interview–Rylee Harper

 

The heroine of SWEETHEART COTTAGE is being interviewed on Dawn’s Reading Nook Blog today. Come on by for a visit and hear what Rylee Harper has to say about Cranberry Bay.

Here is a little teaser…..

What is it about your love interest Bryan that makes you crazy in a good way? Bryan Shuster used to work on cars with my Grandfather when I visited my Grandparents in the summer. I had such the big crush on him! Finally, the summer of my junior year he asked me out. Bryan knew me “when” and that can be both good and bad!

Do you sometimes want to strangle your writer? Thrash her/him to within an inch of their life? Make them do the stupid crap they makes you do? Ah….you know Mindy isn’t so bad. She gave me a great setting—Cranberry Bay is such a fun small town on the north Oregon Coast. And I love the cast of characters I get to play with—especially sixteen-year-old Maddie who is helping me find fun vintage treasures for the river front cottages!

You can read the whole blog post here.