University of Toronto's Poet in Community

This collaborative poem emerged from the Hart House series “A Writer’s Process: The Inside Story” March 2012. Participants were asked to take a line or a phrase they’d written in the three week series and to write it on a flipchart on the last day. The poem was put together by Poet in Community and Hart House Writer in Residence, Ronna Bloom.

The Inside Story

More than just the weather has my spirit soaring.

I am at this poetry workshop. I have absolutely no idea what to expect.

The teller sees the marks on the walls and joins them into new constellations, takes the disorder, the unknowing, births stories.

Like the fake sand, synthetic; the fake coconut attempts to be alive,
attempts to let the white creamy paste bury it.

Growth can’t be achieved without risks.

Why does it feel like I am always putting out fires?

Did the same green grass meet them,
did the same blue skies mock them?

The blueprint email informed the meeting will take place in the Bickersteth Room. It was locked. I felt a sudden strange feeling of impending doom.

I really really think things are going to be Okay.

A breath between words

…an everlasting puncture/bruise…

A break is not to do anything at all.

Two lines I heard at the workshop:
“All that can happen is that I might feel something.”
“What did I survive for…to stand cowering?”

We don’t talk,
yet I see her.
she sees me
we talk that way.

I am still listening to the conversation below.

A Writer’s Process: The Inside Story

Presented by The Hart House Literary & Library Committee

Is there a story inside the story you’re trying to write or a poem beneath the poem? What are the truths you want to share? We carry ourselves like onions with so many layers; the more access we have to the layers, the richer our work and our lives. In these 3 sessions, we’ll do exercises to tap into the truths we carry and might not even know are there. Get a read on the inside story; share it with yourself and perhaps others.

Here’s a note from the editor of Echolocation Magazine:

Echolocation magazine would like to tell the Poet-in-Community community that our issue 12 deadline is fast approaching. Get in your poetry, prose, creative non-fiction, scripts, plays and artwork in by February 29, 2012. The journal is produced and run by the graduate students of the University of Toronto, and while we welcome submissions from everyone, Echolocation very much supports and benefits writers in the Toronto community.

As well, Echolocation is inviting entries for our 2012 poetry contest on the theme of revisions/revisiting. This is an exciting opportunity for a poet to have his or her poem produced as a limited edition letterpress broadside at Massey College. In lieu of a cash prize, the winner will receive 5 copies of the broadside and be invited to read at the launch. 5 runner-ups will have their poems appear in in a digital e-chapbook, which I hope to produce as a letterpress chapbook at a later date. The entry fee should be quite affordable for students at $12, and up to two poems can be submitted, up to a maximum of 50 lines each. Deadline is April 7, 2012.

Full guidelines can be found on our blog at http://www.echolocationmag.wordpress.com and at http://echolocationmag.submishmash.com/submit.

Good luck!

A Writer’s Process: The Inside Story

Presented by The Hart House Literary & Library Committee

Is there a story inside the story you’re trying to write or a poem beneath the poem? What are the truths you want to share? We carry ourselves like onions with so many layers; the more access we have to the layers, the richer our work and our lives. In these 3 sessions, we’ll do exercises to tap into the truths we carry and might not even know are there. Get a read on the inside story; share it with yourself and perhaps others.

Please Note: to be added to the Poet in Community listserv to receive email updates please write to poetincommunity@utoronto.ca

A Writer’s Process: The Inside Story
Presented by The Hart House Literary & Library Committee

Is there a story inside the story you’re trying to write or a poem beneath the poem? What are the truths you want to share? We carry ourselves like onions with so many layers; the more access we have to the layers, the richer our work and our lives. In these 3 sessions, we’ll do exercises to tap into the truths we carry and might not even know are there. Get a read on the inside story; share it with yourself and perhaps others.

I’m not

I’m not the kind of person who writes letters in support of other
people’s causes. I may have been, once. But not now.

I’m not the kind of person who signs up for a zumba-yoga marathon
for charity. Perhaps I was, once. But not now.

I’m not the kind of person who plays the piano for three
hours each day until Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude
goes streaming through her blood. I’d never think of stretching

my fingers that way, spreading out and unfolding like a wire
coat hanger over the keys…even though I may have dreamed it, once.

I’m not the kind of person who goes to live
with an indigenous tribe in Colombia for three weeks

and actually believes that her presence might be positive…
even though, five years ago, it would have been.

I’m not the kind of person who breaks from routine.
I’m not the kind of person who changes the world.

I’m not the kind of person,
I’m not that kind of person…

Please, someone, please take me back, show me the
person I used to be, the one I thought I might become

before everyone told me
that I had grown up.

—-written by Jeannine Pitas, in “The Courage to Connect”   November 2, 2011