A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Corinne Manning, WITS Writer-in-Residence I got to work with the students the day after the March for Our Lives School walkout. It was exciting to see news of Roosevelt High School on Twitter, and I went into class wondering what the students would need most. I wanted to provide them an opportunity to write […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence This fall, I’ve been teaching poetry to fourth graders at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle. Each week before I share the poem that will be our mentor text, I show my students a photograph of the poet and offer a few words about the poet’s concerns, life, and times. In […]
Attention all young poets, rappers, leaders, and activists, ages 14-19 and living in Seattle and the greater Puget Sound region! Are you interested in representing the city as the 2018/19 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate? WITS is now accepting applications for this year’s Youth Poet Laureate, which will be open from March 23 – April 23, 2018. […]
By Daemond Arrindell, WITS Writer-in-Residence The mentor texts used in my classes are usually quite diverse, with the intention of reflecting the demographics of the students, as well as countering the lack of representation of writers of color in the academic canon. As such, the students I work with are exposed to more than just […]
By Evelin Garcia, WITS Writer-in-Residence The following poem made me reflect on the fact that if I did not take the challenge of teaching poetry with WITS, someone else would do it, and that although the challenge was great, I still did it. Enough with maimed dreams On the road of life, transiting among others […]
From my mind to my heart: a message to me One of those late night conversations and I found me The real me Age eighteen I understand now Took the time to look back And I thought Wow Childhood It was a lock down Locked between the people who gave birth to me Defined as […]
Fear When I was little, I was scared of fire. When it lit up, my face looked like a ghost, and my heart sounded like waves crashing on a beach. But now, I when I get scared, I become the thunderstorm. When I become the thunderstorm, my heart will look like courage ready to strike […]
By Katy Ellis, WITS Writer-in-Residence I have to admit revision has never been my strong point as a writer. Only in the last ten years have I truly grasped the fact that my second (or third or fourth or tenth) draft better says what I wanted to say in the first place. Now, I actually […]
By Peter Mountford, WITS Writer-in-Residence I have now entered my tenth year of teaching WITS, and I’m taking a look back. Specifically to my first residency at the TOPS school with teacher Lori Eickelberg’s 8th graders in the spring of 2008. Two years out of my MFA program, I was hard at work on a […]
Pierre We realize perhaps we’ve been playing the waltz too slowly. We continue rapping our knuckles against the walls. Half of us learn how to dance, the rest of us learn how to cuff our jeans. Pierre has a bad day. He climbs the stairs and says No, Really too many times and then he […]