A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Daemond Arrindell, WITS Writer-in-Residence “She does not know her beauty” is one of the first lines in a poem by singer-songwriter and performance poet Iyeoka Okoawo that I use as a mentor text in a lesson I facilitate about reclamation. Iyeoka is a Black woman of Nigerian descent from Boston. The poem provides a […]
Because so much of the work of our Writers in the Schools program happens behind the curtain—in public school rooms and hospital rooms, in notebooks and on sheets of scrap paper, in classroom anthologies and letterpress broadsides—it’s always a remarkable moment when students take the stage at our Year End Readings. Across two nights of […]
By Maiah Merino, WITS Writer-in-Residence My first year with Writer in the Schools, I taught 9th grade poetry at Evergreen High School in Burien, four classes, three of which were English Language Learners. The first class of the day set the rhythm, as they struggled the most with English; they were my compass. Slow it […]
By Evelin Garcia, WITS Writer-in-Residence Puesta del Sol y sus nuevos poetas El día de elegir al lector del año que representará a la escuela Puesta del Sol llegó después de 8 sesiones de trabajo. 90 estudiantes y por supuesto 90 poemas eran los posibles ganadores. Para ser muy justos, pedí a cada uno […]
By Ann Teplick, WITS Writer-in-Residence For the past eight years, I have been a teaching artist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. I have witnessed love, empathy, laughter, celebrations and grief on a profound scale. I have contemplated the complexities of loss and have asked myself how can one possibly continue when a child dies? Each year, […]
Ancestry Isn’t Just Some DNA Test A Letter to My Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother I wonder what your name was. Did it taste like bitter Mount Fuji snow, or sweet dirt from Aokigahara forest? When we were born, did war carve Its name into your fragment bones? When you were a […]
By Christina Lee Barnes, WITS Writer-in-Residence My first-ever WITS residency started off with a fire drill. I’d made it about halfway through my introduction when the loudspeaker cut me off with a garbled a reminder that students would file out to the field in the last ten minutes of class. Covert murmurs of excitement rippled […]
By Laura Gamache, WITS Writer-in-Residence Good writing depends on the author or poet knowing far more about what they are writing than what they put down on paper, and the same probably goes for teaching. I have worked with Marianne Clarke and her 6th grade Language Arts students at TOPS K-8 for several years. She […]
Homeland My family is from Nicaragua. Where the lush grass is green, and the exotic trees are like something from a Dr. Seuss book. The most interesting person in my family to me is my grandma, her accent is firm, sturdy. She holds her accent like a battle-axe ready at any time to go off […]
Every year, Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program holds the Elaine Wetterauer Writing Contest to celebrate the wisdom, creativity, and heart captured in student and teacher poetry. This year, participating students and teachers were encouraged to reflect on art and culture that makes them “feel free,” inspired by the essay collection Feel […]