I decided pretty quickly after getting the Assistant Director position that to do my job properly I should also volunteer for one of the CLC's initiatives, and thus ended up  co-teaching the weekly writing workshop at the boys house at Turning Point as part of our SpeakOut! program. So far, I've been to two of the Turning Point workshops, the second of which I taught. I noticed during my first workshop that a lot of the guys enjoy listening to music while they free write, and there seemed to be a definite rhythm to a lot of their work. That sparked the idea of bringing rhythm based, or more specifically music based poetry to the first workshop I taught. With rhythm as our theme I brought them some blues poetry, some lyrics working in hip-hop rhythm, and finally some examples of slam poetry to emphasize the performative aspects of these styles. The one great thing I've seen so far is that the group reponds to anything and everything we bring them, being really honest and straight-forward about their likes and dislikes. In many ways, they are a lot more open, honest, and engaged than classes I've been in myself in the university system. They seemed to respond most to the work of a slam poet I brought them, Damien Flores, who I met a few years ago while running sound for one of his slam performances. I think they really appreciated the fact that Damien is a young guy who writes about things that are familiar to them, like in the poem "Love is like donkey Kong," which was probably the biggest hit. Several of the boys also pointed out that Damien seems to have really embraced his roots, including spanish terms and references to the New Mexican landscape. I'm thinking the next workshop I lead, next week, I might try to pick up on that writing about your roots aspect and bring in some poems that hit on the subject of heritage, home, etc. I'm always up for suggestions, so feel free to comment with any poems that fit the bill or ideas for other themes! More later...

Kir

Just getting things started...