We kicked off Day One of our young writers’ workshop today!
Dr Karin Westman, the head of our English department at K-State, opened with a brief introduction, thanking the donors who made the workshop possible for their generosity. The director of the workshop, Dr. Ania Payne, welcomed everyone and eased us off into our opening activity.
The workshop was off to an energic start with the interactive “Find Someone Who…” Bingo. The bingo game was very exciting as we discovered that about 70% of the group members were born in August while others struggled to find other people born in the same month as they were.
After that, the young writers decorated the journals that will house their creative pieces during the course of the workshop. Each writer personalized their books; some using colored stars to “illuminate” the dark, galaxy-like cover of the journals.
We began to stir up our creative senses by engaging in an “I Am” poetry activity. Instructor Miracle Okpala guided the young writers through the activity through prompt phrases like “I am,” “I wonder,” “I see,” “I feel,” “I hear,” etc. which all served as a warmup writing activity.
Each person read out their favorite line of their “I am” poetry, and, afterwards, we strung together lines from our poems to form an entire group poem.
After warming up our creative fingers, we dived deeper through a map creation activity led by instructor Noah Jayne. According to Noah, the mapmaker’s best friend is rice, so we had two groups and began the activity began with a large sheet of paper and, of course, rice.
The young writers sprinkled scoops of rice over the sheet and traced the random results, leaving scattered shapes behind. Then they removed the rice and began populating the map with settlements, structures, and features to create a world from unexpected, common items.
One group created a bunch of islands that were themed around different fantasy worlds — lizard gods, races, species and Vikings, dragons and iguanas. Each island had different regions of lava, coral reefs, grasslands, and stone hedges. The islands were each unique in different ways.
The other group created a map which had on it a region formerly known as the “Ash Mountain” but now called “Sector 47” (all fictional). Approximately 10,000 people lived in the mountainous regions to escape the nettlecap virus. Sector 47 had one military settlement guarding a wall that separates the safe population from the virus Launch Zone.
The results between the two groups were vastly different, but both creative and exciting!
After making maps, we walked back to the Beach Museum to treat ourselves to a warm lunch. Shortly after lunch, our visiting writer Dr. Luisa Maryadan led us an intensely productive poetry session. The main focus was on imagery building by writing lines of poetry with a suggested prompt. Our first prompt was to write a line with any senses we had experienced earlier in the day — whether it was something someone had seen, tasted, smelled, touched, or felt.
We continued to explore imagery by attempting to describe abstract emotions. Again, we all took turns to write one descriptive line to capture either Love, fear, confusion, anger or loneliness. After writing our one-liners, each person read it out loud, and it was amazing to see different people describe fear through very distinct images such as: the tightening of your chest when you live alone but you hear the cry of a baby in your living room at 2a.m., among many others.
Luisa introduced us to Eating Together by Li-Young Lee and we observed the poet’s use of imagery. Then we all wrote poems themed around food. We used this activity as a creative exercise to stretch our use of imagery. Imagine describing your experience eating peppered ramen as being “swaddled like a new born”?
To wrap up her session, Luisa introduced us to her poem “Self-Portrait as a Mid-Western Grocery Store.” In addition to savoring the many senses she engaged in the poem, each writer got to write a “self-portrait”of their most comfortable spaces. From cars and libraries to study desks and toilet seats, our writers took us on an adventure.
Luisa’s session was very productive because at the end, everyone had several completed poems or had started poetry ideas. It also built their confidence because each writer received peer feedback on their creative pieces.
To wrap up our creative adventure for the day, we had the “dragon activity.” Mira gave the young writers a prompt about a baby dragon missing from Draconia Academy, a secret school where dragons are trained alongside their riders. Using the prompt as an inspiration, the writers engaged their fictive skills, solving the mystery and writing either in detective, narrative or the journal writing style.
Day One began and ended with high energy. Our young writers are already spinning with creativity and we look forward to what creative pieces they create as the workshop continues throughout the week.
See you tomorrow with more updates of our workshop!
-Mary Adeyemo, Program assistant
K-State Young Writers' Workshop 