This is a love letter to the many students who attended my writing workshops between 2020-2025.
First, here’s a story:
Although I opened this studio in 2020, my interest in poetry facilitation began much earlier.
Way back in 2014, a couple friends encouraged me to facilitate a creative gathering they were putting on at their home, and I said yes. At that point, I had no idea how to facilitate writing or teach mindfulness… I wasn’t terribly mindful myself, to be honest. I knew even less about poetry, other than that it was a form of creative writing that I had loved since I was a pre-teen.
Despite all this, designing that first experience was incredibly fun. I wrote several freewriting prompts and an accompanying meditation on the topic of voice. I invited participants to notice their breath and imagine their voice had not yet arrived and was in a state of waiting. I wanted folks to move through the entire writing and mindfulness exercise in silence. The first time they’d speak was when they read their poetry out loud to one another. It was a thrilling experience. I still have my copy of that very first workshop design in a small memory box I add to every year
Over the following six years, from 2014-2020, I was pulled in lots of different directions. I studied Breathexperience for 3 1/2 years, eventually becoming certified as a teacher. I began a copywriting business, worked as a children’s entertainer, wrote grants for a charity, and began working as a speech arts teacher. Poetry never left my awareness.
I started this studio after taking a leap, applying for, and then receiving a Creative Spark grant from artstarts to facilitate an 8-week series for teens on writing and reading poetry for self-reflection. That first workshop was called Poetic Disruptions. After the series, students shared that they’d learned to approach writing with a spirit of discovery, rather than with a desire to get it right. They also shared that it had expanded their awareness to include experiences other than their own. “I feel like I learned a lot about the soul of poetry,” said another.
After that series, several of you requested a workshop for adults. I built one for you, and then I built another. From there, well, you kept registering for my workshops and supporting me to grow both as a facilitator and a writer.
Together we developed a writing ritual, explored poetry’s relationship to the body, read and wrote poetry to reflect on our relationship to authenticity and our voice, and wondered about the ways finding new metaphors to describe our experience could renew and invigorate us.
You left my classes and wrote books, entered (and won) literary contests, and made poetry a part of your life.
This love letter is to every individual who I’ve worked with over the last 5 years.
A Love Letter to my Students
The text:
It surprises me, every time, how alive your poetry feels. I wonder if that’s what happens when the body is included and doubt becomes inconsequential — I can see (and I can feel) that you’re not trying to ‘use’ your creativity to show me your worth. You know that you belong. You’re here to play.
Every week, I love witnessing the way you hold this new poem that is yours, this poem that you wrote because you resisted the impulse to step on the breaks and control the language that was pouring out of you.
I also love how often your poetry includes your breath and your body. And how compassionate your poetry so often is (towards yourself, towards the life experience that has brought you to this moment) and how immersed you become when listening to the experience of others.
I’ve always yearned for a space that would allow for this kind of listening, and it has been a such a joy to realize that others feel the same as me.
Thank you for trusting me to create a landscape for you to wander within every week. You remind me: so much creativity exists within every one of us. This may sound cliche, but my god is it ever true. Thank you.
You have added so much richness to my life.