March 19, 2018
By Gabrielle Bates Anastacia Renée: “Do you feel free on the page?” Tyehimba Jess: “I feel opportunity.” * Seeing and hearing Tyehimba Jess read from his Pulitzer-Prize winning collection Oli...
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March 14, 2018
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...
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March 12, 2018
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...
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March 8, 2018
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.
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March 7, 2018
Many of us awoke to the sad news this morning that beloved poet Lucie Brock-Broido has passed away. Brock-Broido, the Director of Poetry and a professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia, once sai...
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March 2, 2018
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...
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February 20, 2018
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 Ei...
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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. Pier...
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February 9, 2018
By Laura Gamache, WITS Writer-in-Residence The book said everything perishes The book said that’s why we sing -Gregory Orr Every WITS teaching residency has a beginning, middle and end, like the sto...
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February 8, 2018
Mom, Today I was followed by every man who’s ever left us (again) Which is to say ghosts are hereditary Which is to ask who will my children carry in the echo of their ribcage? How much of me is...
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