National Poetry Month at Open Books!
April 24, 2017
Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle’s beloved poetry-only bookstore, has been celebrating National Poetry Month like mad all April. If you’ve missed the first three weeks of contests, pr...
SAL/ON
A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Category: Student Writing
WITS Voices: Eating Poetry
April 10, 2017
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence A friend of a friend was looking for a poem her fifth-grade son could memorize for a class project. The question came to me and I made a couple of sugge...
WITS Voices: Writing About the Weather
April 2, 2017
By: Karen Finneyfrock, WITS Writer-in-Residence A few weeks ago, it snowed in Seattle! That’s a pretty exciting occurrence for inhabitants on the Puget Sound. Students got a snow day, followed by a ...
The Great Punctuation: Alice Notley & Mother-Bright-Appearance
March 31, 2017
By Sierra Nelson, WITS Writer-in-Residence I first encountered Alice Notley’s work seeing her read in Seattle for the Rendezvous Reading Series cosponsored by Subtext. It was 1999. It was Hugo House...
“In This Moment,” by WITS Teacher Marylou Gomez
March 2, 2017
Last week, WITS Writer Daemond Arrindell shared a powerful poem with us written by Marylou Gomez, his partner teacher at South Lake High School. The whole SAL staff was moved by her words and the purp...
On Ross Gay and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
February 21, 2017
By Gabrielle Bates I feel like a different type of tenderness might be emerging.—Ross Gay When Ross Gay read for the SAL Poetry Series last week, it was exactly what I needed. I dare say it was exac...
“Untitled Tags,” by Joseph Hairston, Seattle Youth Poet Ambassador
February 15, 2017
Untitled Tags Rest in Peace to Mike Brown 17-year-old graduate shot down In the middle of the street For a swisher sweet Complete chaos no peace When will we reach that day That day we don’t see...
“Holy” by WITS Student Abdullahi Mohamed
February 8, 2017
Holy the first breath you take and the last exhale of your life, Holy the song stuck in your head, Holy from a hug to a kiss to love, Holy the new jeans you bought, Holy when you looked better in the ...
WITS Voices: An Alternative to Alternative Facts
February 7, 2017
By Jeanine Walker, WITS Writer-in-Residence By the time this post is published, we will have endured several tens of other injustices, threats on our freedoms, and evasions from the new presidential a...
WITS Voices: We Deal in Magic
February 2, 2017
By Matt Gano, WITS Writer-in-Residence There’s real magic flying from the fingertips of the young poets at The Center School. We speak in terms of allusion in terms of empathy and connectivity. We c...