My first real week of the Artist Residency

Alhamdu lillah, this is the second week of the Artist in the Library residency. I’m feeling a little better about the refugee situation.

As soon as possible, we’re going to be donating to some refugee camps in Jordan. We’re budgeting for about $500. (I wasn’t going to say the amount but hey, if it encourages anyone else to donate, why not? right?)

Our masjid is sponsoring some Syrian families and the donations are good alhamdu lillah!

I have contacts who know trustworthy people there who can distribute funds. They are saying the situation is dire, many refugees are starving and since the Ontario government and even the stingy conservative government has finally opened up to accepting refugees coming here (thank God!!!) then I try to see where the need is the greatest.

I’m so fortunate to get this grant! For three months I’ll be doing writing and public speaking programs and opening myself up to the community that is served by Downsview Public Library. It’s quite different from Fairview library that I did last year. This area seems a little less affluent.

It was a busy week of the residency and although the numbers have been small (compared to Fairview) the impact has been interesting.

On Wednesday afternoon a mother dragged her daughter into my writing session. In whispers she spoke to her, and I could see the girl trying to argue back but eventually the mother left to wait outside in the main book area.

I was still in the midst of teaching two little six year olds some writing skills. We were talking about stories, and how they need to have a problem and I was doing my ‘magic mitten’ exercise. Every once in a while I glanced over at the girl and I could see her eyes were shiny with tears, although she was able to keep it together enough so that I never actually saw any teardrops fall.

“Are you all right?” I asked. And she nodded hastily.

I continued working with the two children, one a boy and the other a little girl, and I tried to keep it light and funny, and as we worked, the older girl unfolded her legs from the chair she was sitting on and let them touch the floor.

She was actually here for the tween public speaking workshop. But she’d been dropped off early for the children’s writing session.

So at 4:00 the only other kid who’d registered for the tween public speaking, a bold little guy who had attended a lot of the other sessions, arrived and we started the public speaking workshop.

Both of the older children couldn’t have been more different! The boy was outspoken, I had to actually reign him in to be a better speaker and the girl was so shy it was painful.

I highly doubted I’d be able to get her to open up enough to tell a story. And at one point I said that if I could just mash the boy and the girl together I’d have a perfect public speaker, I saw the girl smile.

At the end she did tell a story. She told a version of the three little pigs (a staple when it comes to storytelling) and as she spoke, very quietly, but distinctly, she was unsure of which version of the tale to use showing that she was quite knowledgeable.

When her mother showed up to pick her up, she asked me about other public speaking sessions her daughter could attend and I told her about the Saturday session but then I told her also about the writing session. The girl spoke up, she wanted to attend both of them! And her mother scolded her with an ‘I told you so’ that she’d enjoy it!

Sure enough she attended both sessions on Saturday, but this time, because there were more children attending (six including the outspoken boy who’d been at the Wednesday class) she was too shy to participate in the telling. I have hopes she’ll open up more by the end of the program.

One thing that has been surprising to me is how popular the seniors’ program “The Essence of Memoir” has been. I had eight people registered and the stories these seniors have to tell are amazing!

One of the ladies wrote about leaving Seoul during the war when the North invaded. The family had left without finding out what happened to her sister. They’d been informed that she had died only to find out decades later that she was alive, but in North Korea.

After many bureaucratic hurdles they were able to visit her. The sister is in her eighties!

The seniors were very enthusiastic about writing! And in fact one of the ladies wrote a piece that was so poetic, I told her there was nothing I could do to improve it! It didn’t need to be turned into found poetry! The Korean lady had written a piece and I illustrated how I wanted them to turn it into found poetry.

At the end of the session, one of the other ladies, from Taiwan I believe, had questions and stayed behind to discuss them with me.

Her memory was from something her mother had told her, and I helped her transcribe it into a found poem that was quite remarkable in the power of its imagery. I was particularly happy when she said that she didn’t like the way I’d transcribed one of her statements. She thought it should be written in a different way, and I thought to myself, “Good! She’s taking creative control of this herself!”

The experience of dealing with these seniors was very rewarding for me as an artist. Writing often includes sketching different types of characters and these were people I’d never come across before.

I learned a lot from them and I look forward to learning more.

The residency is such an intense experience! I work so hard, but alhamdu lillah, it gives me a lot to ponder over as well.