A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Laura Gamache, WITS Writer-in-Residence Judith Roche grew up in Detroit, Michigan, but she almost didn’t. Her poem, “Drowning in Lake Michigan,” begins: “My first memory looks up to sunlight through water.” I heard her read it a few years back at an It’s About Time reading at the Ballard Public Library. It is the […]
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 […]
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 […]
A Poem in the Voice of the Wind Like you, I can make the warmest of weather into a sick, shivering mess. Like you, I am angry, and whip at people’s hair and clothes, though you only do it in your imagination. Like you, I love to stir up the sand with my fingertips, but […]
Hemlockwing In my sleeping, midnight wings unfold they are ragged, dusty, like the silencing cobwebs that stir in my breath the darkness is my mooring my ship is the resurrection of a lost dream though that heart was long ago discarded still beating arms ornamented with red-brown feathers mottled with blood I am the sparrow, […]
By Laura Gamache, WITS Writer-in-Residence On my ninth day with fourth graders at Broadview-Thomson, I asked the kids to take out their hearts, and hand them in to me. I had drawn each heart on red copier paper before our second meeting, after the teachers had expressed doubt the kids could reliably draw them themselves. […]