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 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 Olio at SAL two weeks ago has me rethinking every parameter and practice I’ve ever accepted as fixed. The expansive, acrobatic, mechanical wonder of Jess’s syncopated […]
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 […]
On February 15 at Benaroya Hall, Colson Whitehead—the Pulitzer Prize-winner with a taste for the fantastical—delivered a talk on his latest, The Underground Railroad. SAL Executive Director Ruth Dickey introduced Colson for this 2017/18 Literary Arts Series event, which included a Q&A with Seattle writer Stephanie Stokes Oliver. By Ruth Dickey, SAL Executive Director In Sag Harbor, […]
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 said during her 2014/15 SAL Poetry Series reading: “A poem goes driving, then hunting. I’m willing to go anywhere to […]