Upon mentioning to her colleagues that in their first ABC (Art, Creativity and Wellbeing) workshop they would be writing poems, ArtCorps Artist Jennifer Sklar Gilbert heard a chorus of groans. Here’s how Jenny is helping the FUNDAHMER staff to change the way they think about poetry and become poets themselves.
In El Salvador, where martyred poet Roque Dalton is a national idol, why would my colleagues be so opposed to poetry?
The Poet Activists of FUNDAHMER
I asked this question to the driver and secretary one morning as we sat down to sweet bread and coffee. “Oh, poetry,” groaned the driver. “None of us get excited about poetry because it was boring when we studied it in school. All we did was memorize poems for homework and recite them in front of the class like parrots.”
“But didn’t you analyze the poems in class? Talk about the rhythm, the metaphors, the feelings the poet conveyed through his words? ” I asked. He shook his head. I continued, “And the teacher never assigned you to write poems?”
“No,” sighed the secretary. “We copied poems from books and memorized them. That’s all.”
“Just wait,” I promised them both. “I promise you that you both are poets.” They shrugged their shoulders.
That Wednesday morning, after finishing our beans and plantains, the 10 staff members/artists and I sat down in a circle to embark on our poetic journey. We began with an activity called “Unwording our names,” which consisted in jumbling the letters of our “Artist name”(to be explained in a future blog) and saw which words we could form using the same letters. For example in my artist name “Azucena” (Lily) I can form “Cena” (dinner), “cuna” (crib), “Caza” (to hunt). Once we had found all the words hidden in our names, we had to stitch the words together into a verse.
The Kindergarten teacher found that her name unscrambled into “Mermaid,” and wrote—
In sand,
The mermaid
Is a sand-less frog.
The scholarship student coordinator found the words, “Light” and “Path” in her name, and composed—
I will be a path,
A blue path.
I will be light.
While most of my colleagues looked smug about their poetic findings, a couple of them still looked at me skeptically, their faces asking, “Nope. Try all you want but I’m never going to like poetry.”
I ignored off their pessimism and handed out copies of Pablo Neruda’s famous poem, “Ode to my sock,” and we entered into the mystical world of the famous Chilean who celebrates a pair of socks given to him by a friend. “I don’t like it,” spattered the scholarship coordinator. So we read it again, and began discuss the significance of finding beauty in ordinary things until she admitted, “Oh. I like it. It’s pretty.”
Next they scattered with the assignment:
- Find an object FUNDAHMER office.
- Sit down and “talk” with it for 5 minutes.
- Write an ode celebrating this object.
In the 20 minutes that followed, I witnessed many frightened scowls soften into pensive grins. We reconvened in our circle, and one by one, the artists of FUNDAHMER read their odes: “Ode to the Coconut Tree”, “Ode to the Flowers”, “Ode to the String Bean”, “Ode to a Shell”, “Ode to a dried Rose”.
Our secretary explained that as she was looking for an object to write her ode about, she felt the time ticking away, and so she wrote an “Ode to the Watch”. The youth group coordinator chose a picture of Monsignor Romero, (the Salvadoran Archbishop who was murdered by the U.S supported army in 1980 in response to his human rights work) and wrote an “Ode to America” which begins with the verses:
Poor America.
Why did the Spaniards have to come?
Poor America.
They robbed you of everything:
Women, gold, silver, etc.
Poor America.
You were subjected to slavery.
How unjust!
Our beloved driver, perhaps inspired by the poems I put up in the bathrooms, closed us out with his “Ode to the Toilet,” where he put personified the john as a supportive, hard working friend who always supports our efforts. Unfortunately, citing those verses in this blog would be unprofessional.
Our final activity was Newspaper Poetry. I threw down a stack of last week’s newspapers in the center of the circle and asked, “What do you think of the news in this country.”
“Lies!”
“They just show violence and consumerism!”
“Death death death!”
I gave each of them a pair of scissors with the assignment to pick an article that angered them, cut out at least 10 words from the article, and use those words to write a poem.
The Kindergarten teacher wrote about the price of beans (a staple food in El Salvador whose price tripled in the past year from 50 cents to $1.50). She explained how the newspaper just talks about the price, but never explains the roots of the price increase: poor harvests due to hurricanes and droughts caused by climate change.
The executive director wrote about the exploitation of mining companies in the rural areas. The education director responded to an article which explained how the United States continually refused to import the “Flor de Izote” the national flower of El Salvador, due to food safety standards. Finally, the scholarship coordinator, who had been the first to say, “I don’t like poetry,” came out with a biting critique of the cell phone companies in El Salvador in response to a Movistar ad which nearly received a standing ovation.
They rob you without compassion.
They make you believe that they give you double phone credit
So that you can call anywhere in the world,
But they’ve already charged you.
It’s a farce, a trick,
They don’t give you anything!
Instead, you make them rich
Buying minutes with your tiny salary.
In our final activity, I taped a blank sheet of paper on everyone’s back and asked them to write a compliment in the form of a verse of poetry on each of their colleague’s backs. We finished with a group hug, and I smiled watching them head up to their offices reading their papers. They finally believed what I had been telling them all along: that they could write poetry. That we all can.
