Writing as Activism Prompt: April 14

April 14: A Tale of Two Cities

• Reading material
  - Break on Through, Abbot Kinney (The Baffler)
  - Is Sculley Committed to Our Future? (San Antonio Express-News)
  - Seventh Largest City and Little to Show for It (SA Express-News)
  - Gentrified East Side (SA Current)
  - Roots of Economic Segregation (Christine Drennon)
• Sunbelt City
  - major industries are car dealerships, tourism/hospitality/service, highways
  - Pew Research Center reported San Antonio as the most economically segregated major metropolitan area
• Quest to serve or sell San Antonio?
  - marketed as a cheap labor town
• So long, Mission Trails
  - displacement of residents prompted Mayor's Task Force on Preserving Dynamic and Diverse Neighborhoods
  - economic development, revitalization, for whom?
  - city of SA currently has no dislocation policy in place
• Segregated school districts
  - history of segregation by property tax and racial restrictions in housing deeds in inner city

Writing Prompt:

• Which side of the tracks do you come from? Write the perspective of your city as you see it through your creative lens

National Poetry Month: Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

- "The Dream Keeper," Langston Hughes

Writing as Activism Prompt: April 7

April 7: On Trial

• Reading Material
  - The Trial (Franz Kafka)
  - The Prophet on Laws (Kahlil Gibran)
  - The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (Matt Taibbi)
  - A case of "Affluenza" (Dallas, TX)
• Listening Material
  - Interview with Matt Taibbi (NPR)
• Viewing Material
  - Opening vignette from "The Trial" (Narrated by Orson Welles)
• Jury of your peers?
  - Judge not lest ye be judged
• Politics of class
  - Those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder are removed from society with jail time and a permanently tarnished record for minor possession of an illegal substance while administrators of the "too big to fail" banks receive a slap on the wrist with monetary fines for acknowledging such heinous crimes as money laundering (millions) for international drug cartels

Writing Prompt:

• Justice or Restitution? Describe a time when you've been put on trial for your convictions

National Poetry Month: Mary Oliver

Did you see it too, drifting, all night on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air,
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees,
    like a waterfall
knifing down the black edges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds --
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
     of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- "Swan," Mary Oliver

April 1st Marks National Poetry Month

1 Abril 2015

In reverence of national poetry month, San Antonio will be hosting poetry events all throughout April!
Check here for details: National Poetry Month SA

I'll be posting poems weekly from a number of influential works - haikus, ghazals, free verse, etc. Let us begin the celebration with stealing sugar:


We are poor students who stay after school to study joy.
We are like those birds in the India mountains.
I am a widow whose child is her only joy.

The only thing I hold in my ant-like head
Is the builder's plan of the castle of sugar.
Just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy!

Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall,
Which is lit with singing, then fly out again.
Being shut out of the warm hall is also a joy.

I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot. But I love
To read about those who caught one glimpse
Of the Face, and died twenty years later in joy.

I don't mind your saying I will die soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon, I hear
The word you which begins every sentence of joy.

"You're a thief!" the judge said. "Let's see
Your hands!" I showed my callused hands in court.
My sentence was a thousand years of joy.

- "Stealing Sugar from the Castle," Robert Bly

Writing as Activism Prompts: March Recap

March 31: Cultural Identity

• Reading Material
  - Quixote Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981 (David Montejano)
  - Memory of Fire (Memoria del Fuego) Trilogy (Eduardo Galeano)
  - Ghost Dance: The Poetics of Loss (Melissa Kwasny)
  - Oxford Union Debate Presentation, Dec 3, 1964 (Malcolm X)
• Viewing Material
  - Latino Americans (documentary)
  - Ken Burns' Jazz (documentary)
  - The Freshest Kids: A History of the B-Boy (documentary)
• Listening Material
  - Black Power Speech (Stokely Carmichael)
• Race or Ethnicity or Nationality?
  - Race as social construct
  - Early American music recording industry labelled blues and jazz as "race music"
  - Beyond race in the 21st Century, transcending the hyphenated

Writing Prompt:

• What culture do you speak? Write the narrative of your unique American history

March 24: Human Nature

• Reading Material
  - Human Nature: Justice vs. Power - Debate with Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault (1971)
  - Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialogue (UT Austin professor Robert Jensen)
  - Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Sherry Turkle)
• Viewing Material
  - Robert Jensen on Arguing for Our Lives at Book People
• Freud-Foucault vs. Chomsky-Jensen
  - Is there a universal human nature?
  - Is authoritarian structure conducive, let alone necessary, for creative progress within human development?
  - What are the underlying impulses driving our functioning selves?
• Three principles derived from observation-research
  - to survive
  - to create
  - to communicate
• Alone Together
  - with an overabundance of communication avenues in this "information age" we still seem to be largely disconnected from the idea of community
• Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
  - Physiological
  - Safety
  - Love and Belonging
  - Self-Esteem
  - Self Actualization

Writing prompt:

• What's in your human nature? Describe the parameters wherein you see creativity or communication can flourish

March 17: The Classroom

• Reading material
  - featured poems by Rabi'a and Rumi rendered by Daniel Ladinsky (see Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West), and a poem by Mary Oliver titled "The Poet Dreams of the Classroom"
  - "A school I sat in cured me of hurting others" - Rabi'a
  - "What classrooms have you lounged in; What nonsense have you traded your gold for?" - Rumi
• The function of public schooling
  - system of indoctrination and subordination
  - preparation for the workforce or higher education?
• Current state of higher education
  - corporatization of the university
  - student debt, average student owing between $25k-$30k upon graduation, debt surpassing $1 trillion mark
• Contrast with structured hierarchy of formal schooling with informal educational institutions
  - Institutions arising out of a collective organic need

Writing prompt:

• Write the vision that comes to mind for your ideal classroom

March 10: Letters

• Listening Material
  - The Source (Texas Public Radio) interview featuring poet Gary Snyder and writer Julia Martin
  - Death Letter Blues (Son House)
• Reading Material
  - Letter to a Hindu (Leo Tolstoy)
  - Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
  - Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke)
• Passing notes
  - nostalgia of writing notes back and forth in middle/high school

Writing prompt:

• Write a letter to someone, alive or dead, or to something, past or present

March 3: Circles

• Reading Material
  - Circles (essay) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Viewing Material
  - Islamic Mysticism: The Sufi Way (documentary), written and narrated by world religions author/professor Huston Smith
  - Opening preface from documentary:
  "Going around in circles is a pejorative, a put-down. And with reason for life has its mad whirl, its deadening round. But for the Sufis, circling is the perfect motion. For the circle triumphs over time. It travels without leave-taking. It's true that going in circles gets us nowhere, but what if we're already there?"

Writing prompt:

• Write what has come full circle in your life or what seems to be spiraling out of control

http://geminiink.org/event/writing-as-activism/2015-03-24/

Writing Lab at Gemini Ink

Post Spring Break Recap
- With more free time available during the semester I've taken on hosting a writing lab at local literary center Gemini Ink.
- I see writing as a form of activism - I'm concerned with political activism, community organizing - and in the writing lab we engage the "Active Imagination." Poet Melissa Kwasny introduced this term during a reading last fall at Bihl Haus Arts. Inspired by mystic Sufi poetry, she takes the idea of the image further, deeper, deepening into a vision, ultimately arriving at the center of a "visionary recital" wherein we all play a part, bearing witness to a world actively, creatively occurring around us.
- Each class begins with a brief introduction to "Active Imagination" followed by a prompt.

See below for writing laboratory info. Hope to see you at Gemini Ink (111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205). Spread the word!

Free coffee and a warm place to write—join Gemini Ink and see where your words will take you.

Unlike a formal workshop, writing labs are a time and space to write in a group setting. Share your work in progress. Get encouragement and feedback from fellow writers. As a member, you can participate in as many member-led writing labs as you like.

Open Writers

Share your works-in-progress in this peer-driven workshop.
Hosted by Dario Beniquez
Last Monday of every month, 6:30–8pm, Ongoing

Writing as Activism

Engage your creative imagination.
Hosted by Rene Jaime Gonzalez
Tuesdays, Mar 3-May 5, 2–4pm

Writing for Young Readers

Make time to scribble that story for your child, or your inner child.
Hosted by Lisa Cortez Walden
Thursdays, Mar 5-May 7, 12–1:30pm

Voice Lab

Explore many genres of writing and build your voice in a focused, supportive environment.
Hosted by Julia Jarrell
Fridays, Mar 6-May 1, 9:30am–1pm

Non-members are welcome to come check out one FREE session.  Register by emailing lcortezwalden@gmail.com.

Member Writing Labs