A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
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 […]
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 stories humans are wired to crave. As a primarily lyric poet, I tend to work with kids as if we’re outside the narrative arc […]
By Imani Sims, WITS Writer-in-Residence It’s always an experiment when trying to engage young minds with new content. The haibun form allows for concrete examples while also allowing the freedom to imagine. This fall, I spoke to a group of young folks who embraced this idea with vigor. The Form: Haibun Definition: A “literary form originating […]
By Jeanine Walker, WITS Writer-in-Residence As a poet, I love to play with words. When writing or revising a poem, I can spend hours switching out a single word or phrase in an attempt to get the exact right one. Despite this, I believe a poet’s business is not words, exactly. A poet’s job is […]
Sing, Mother, Sing sing, Mother, sing sing to me before you leave me sing about your tears puddling up in your eyes sing the high notes and sing the low notes sing in the dark, abandoned streets of China sing the chorus of guilt and sorrow sing about the life I will have sing to […]
By Ramon Isao, WITS Writer-in-Residence For my inaugural WITS post, I hope you’ll forgive a mere anecdote. I’m new here. On the night before my first WITS residency, I was surprised by a bout of panic. I got out of bed and tried my best to chuckle it off. There was nothing to fear. I’d […]
Today, the words and wisdom of legendary poet, Nikki Giovanni, will wow us at the first event in our 2017/18 Sherman Alexie Loves Series. Although the event is sold out, there will be a limited number of tickets available at the door. In this essay, WITS Writer-in-Residence Laura Gamache welcomes us into Nikki’s beautiful descriptions […]
By Letitia Cain, WITS Writer-in-Residence & SAL Event Manager It’s a Scottish tradition to open the front door of your house at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve to welcome in the new year, then rush to open the back door to let go of the past year. It’s a way of ushering […]
By Matt Gano, WITS Writer-in-Residence I hate the word “lecture.” I’ve always considered teaching poetry as a “conversation.” I hope to learn along with my students by talking about creative ideas, to open space in the classroom to unpack concepts such as “writing from the body,” “poetry as an economy of language,” “write what you […]