[A Dispatch from the Youth Poetry Workshop, Recently Completed after an Intense 4-Week Campaign]
Lighthouse is lucky, blessed even, by the plain truth that if the grown-ups were ever to get abducted, en-masse, to serve the insatiable literary appetites of our insectile alien overlords, we would be covered. We have an excellent bench.
These kids (I'm talking about kids here) make up the elite task force known as the Lighthouse Youth Program, so amiably marshaled by Gen. M. Nix.
It was my recent dream assignment to be handed the reins of the 4-week youth poetry class/workshop.
Now, before any of you panic, conjure visions of a stagecoach full of school kids being driven recklessly around hairpin turns somewhere high up on Goofball Pass, know this: the serious hardened writers, ages from "before middle school" to "after middle school," who greeted me around the table that first Thursday led me to understand post-haste that they were not going to put up with any of my usual BS.
So it was back to basics, of sorts, as we talked pretty much only about three poetry subjects, for four Thursdays in a row. We talked about rhyme. We talked about metaphors. And we talked—because, ha-ha I snuck it in—about making lists.
The elements of this discussion included:
- readings and recitations from published poets (guess which book I read from the most...)
- writing exercises whose rules were often well-flouted
- several rounds of the great card-game “Set”
- an unfortunate incident involving a Dymo Labelmaker
- and the invention of a metaphor-making machine.
The results, including some exceptional Spoonserian stanzas, will hopefully be seen in upcoming blog entries or Lighthouse printed materials.
Thanks to all the kids who took place in the class. My hat—and I am wearing a hat—is off to you.
J Diego
