That’s what we at WAM (Warren Artists Market) do and have been doing it since our first gathering in 2012. In February 2013, we sponsored an Art & Poetry reception where we poets wrote poems about the art exhibited by hometown artists and read the poetry while standing next to the artwork. It was great! The art and related-framed poems remained in the library (by request) for 2 months!
The artists were the late Jay Person, Wheeler Smith, and Ronnie Williams. The poets were Thomas Park, Sherman Johnson, and me. And so it began.
We hosted FFP open mic nights at the Warren Food Works, moved a few times when they were closed, and came back again. Their crew was always helpful and encouraging, supplying us with food and great liquid refreshments. Special nights were held, sometimes honoring particular holidays, sometimes featuring live music, sometimes dancers performed. Singers performed a cappela. Other special nights were held sponsoring Book Release Parties & Signings. Sterling Cheston added music selections to our events. Guest readers were featured. Often it was standing room only!
We facilitated a writing group at the Senior Center resulting in Chapbooks published; hosted play readings, and held workshops.
WAM began publishing an annual anthology in 2013 with SITTING WITH A DRUNKEN SORCERESS Poems and Prose to invite you, to incite you, to delight you, followed by Life Preserved: Memories An Anthology and INSPIRATIONS, an anthology on Warren County, and THIS I KNOW an anthology. Presently we are accepting submissions for HOME an anthology.
WAM is a writer’s collective and offers after school creative writing-arts programs. It was founded by writer, teacher Thomas Haywood Park.
We continue to grow and improve, to draw participants from greater distances, letting artists and writers know that our door is open and the mic is on.
Category: writing
MAISIE DOBBS and WRITING YOUR OWN STORY
TO DIE BUT ONCE- Jacqueline Winspear and WRITING YOUR OWN STORY
This latest book in her Maisie Dobbs series has just as much excitement, tension, human interest, and knowledge about WW II as her earlier books. Like most of her others in the series, I began to read it as soon as it came into my hands. Oh, to find out what was going on in Maisie Dobbs life since her last story! I read it in one day.
In reading about the author, she discusses how, as a child she grew up listening to the stories about the war from her close and extended family. Her family was large with many uncles, each with their own version of what they experienced. This meant that they covered most of the areas involved in the Second World War. The women of the family had their own stories about home life, their volunteer work and the struggles they lived through.
In 2003 her first book in the series was published with the story based during WWI coming from growing up listening to her grandparents talk about their life during those years. The stories included many of the social changes going on in England that would become permanent.
You may not realize it, but your stories of growing up and the stories you heard from your family and their friends are just as important and exciting to someone else as what Ms. Winspear has built a writing career about.
Writing your story, telling it as it happened to you, how you saw it, maybe differently than your siblings, is important. As you write, you will relive moments you thought you had forgotten. Unhappy experiences will be seen and felt differently, healing old wounds as you write.
Writing is beneficial in so many ways whether you write with pen in hand or on a computer. This is the excitement in why I offer workshops on Memoir . . . . Writing Your Story.
BEING DIFFERENT
MY HOUSE ON THE CHURCH SIDE
Being different is not the same as not belonging. It may be a cause for not belonging but being different stands alone. I grew up being told I was different, not because of being the only girl in a neighborhood of boys (and I had two brothers, no sisters) but because we were the only family without a father in the house. It was quite unusual in those days and in our neck of the woods.
We weren’t confined to the back yard but allowed to roam as long as we didn’t cross the busy streets that defined the neighborhood. I didn’t have an ounce of shyness in me then, not even internally. That came later when I would have to push myself forward.
A half block up Liberty Street was a neighbor who also lived in a semi-detached house. He owned two lots alongside his house that were planted in vegetables but mostly in flowers. At 7 years old I would stop my bike and talk to him through the fence while he worked. He never encouraged it but he didn’t reject me either. One summer day I asked, “How come I always see you outside working but I have never seen your wife. You have a wife, don’t you? And how about kids. Do you have kids? I’ve never seen any.”
He explained to me that their children were grown up with households of their own and that his wife was very ill and liked to be quiet. I quickly followed up with, “Why did you build a swimming pool if you don’t have kids?”
These were the days when the only swimming pools were community pools that you needed to pay to get in. Woodlawn was the pool we went to once a week in the summer with the school playground program. It was a 2 mile walk, one way.
He patiently explained that he built his pool (a wooden structure 5 feet high, about 10 feet long and 8 feet wide) for exorcise, told me to never come in the yard without his invitation. I think this came after I told him about my climbing adventures on the church fence. He also invited my brother and me to come swim in his pool on a day he selected, with a written consent from my mother. We went two or three times and loved it, respected his rules and never pushed ourselves on his generosity.
His generosity expanded to giving me fresh flowers for my mother on Mother’s Day after I told him that I rode four blocks away to the cemetery to pick some flowers from the gravestones for Mom on Easter. He kindly but firmly explained why I should never, ever do that again, that if I needed flowers to come ask him. I never picked flowers from the cemetery again.
TELLING YOUR STORY IS . . . .
Telling Your Story- Writing memoir is many things to the writer. It’s often a trip down a path that got you to where you are today, showing the result of sometimes funny things that happened to you and sometimes not so funny. You can write parts of that path, starting out at a bend in the road and ending at a bend further down the road. There is no need to try to start at the very beginning. That may overwhelm you, especially if you are older than 30 and have lived a full and varied life. I can promise you that if you write everyday, even if it is only a half hour, you will begin to remember moments you thought you had forgotten forever. It’s true, the more you write, the more you remember without effort. It just comes, sneaking up on you like a kitten trying to get your attention with a soft, tiny paw tapping on your knee.
About a year ago, I began writing about the 15 years of traveling Angelo and I did stopping at horseracing tracks from as far away as Australia, across our country, Canada, and even the Curragh in Ireland. So, look for RUNNING WITH THE HORSES, expected publishing date is August of this year.
more of HAVE I TOLD YOU? Ellie Newbauer booksigning party
HAVE I TOLD YOU? Booksigning for Ellie Newbauer went beautifully well today at the Rosemont Winery. A good turnout of friends from near and far on a lovely, sunny afternoon raised glasses in tribute to our 92 year old leader of the pack. Many HAVE I TOLD YOU? Conversations were carried on. We each read a page from Ellie’s book before we asked her to do the same.
HAVE I TOLD YOU? Booksigning Party for Ellie Newbauer
HAVE I TOLD YOU? Booksigning for Ellie Newbauer went beautifully well today at the Rosemont Winery. A good turnout of friends from near and far on a lovely, sunny afternoon raised glasses in tribute to our 92 year old leader of the pack. Many HAVE I TOLD YOU? Conversations were carried on. We each read a page from Ellie’s book before we asked her to do the same.
FIRST FRIDAY OPEN MIC NIGHT SEPT. 1 AT 7 PM
FIRST FRIDAY OPEN MIC NIGHT! AT 108 S. MAIN ST. WARRENTON NC
Join us in an evening of readings and who knows what or who, may appear to perform! Gabe is preparing some foods especially for us! plus lattes, etc. coffee, teas & cold drinks. Come out to read or just listen! A NEW TRADITION-WE’RE STARTING AT 7 PM! Sterling will present selected music for added ambiance.
WHY TELL OUR STORIES?
WHY MEMOIR? WHY TELL OUR STORIES?
As tribal grandmothers and grandfathers gathered the children around the campfire to tell the stories of their existence, how they came to be, the children learned of their heritage. They learned of the struggles and joys of their parents and those who came before. As they grew into adults, the children could lean on those stories when they faced difficulties in their own lives. Stories passed down to them were the rocks they could revisit for answers to their questions.
It is the same with us today. When we tell our stories, and tell them honestly, we not only leave a legacy for those who come after us, but we offer help and information for those who are seeking answers for problems. How many people read the personal stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul and find encouragement, direction, and a way to go forward?
Another important reason for us to tell our stories – it is good for others to know the true us, the us that isn’t always revealed in our daily lives. What we think, how we feel, the difficult times we got through, our misunderstandings that caused family separations, and the joys we celebrated, these are life lessons offered to help any reader. They come from us, the everyday person who is not featured in the headlines in the newspaper or on the Big News feed. Our stories are so important!
GET A GRIP ON YOUR GRAMMAR by Kris Spisak, a book review
Who would have thought! Or how did Spisak ever think of writing a book on grammar and making it so entertaining that I carry it with me! It’s a pick up and read when I get a chance, great to read in a waiting room and have everyone else in the room looking at me while my laughter overflows! This book is an absolute must read for any writer or editor or teacher or anyone who ever picks up a pen -to fill out a form or sign your name or write a note/letter. In other words, this is a book for everyone to love as I do.
Spisak gives us tips on the difference in using bear or bare, doing good or doing well. She also leads us into where to put a comma in greetings. Sounds simple, right? You may be surprised! How about cutting out unnecessary words that drag on you and don’t move your thoughts along?
All these tips are told in a breezy way that pulls your attention in, mingled with stories and examples that help you to remember the reason why or why not to use a word or a phrase, etc. I LOVE THIS BOOK! And (Is that correct?) I never, ever, believed before that I could love a book on grammar!
PS: Attention school teachers and those who order books for students.
PS #2: More to come on this one.
PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE LINEAGE
The photo shows Grandmother Elizabeth Urbanski Daniels (my mother’s mother) holding me approximately one year before she passed away. No stories have come to me about anyone before her in her birth line being psychically developed. She certainly was. My mother didn’t tell me about this until I was nearly 30 years old. I’d had some out of body experiences of my own, but Mom didn’t know that. She never knew it because I never told her. Mom had a habit of belittling me, so I wasn’t about to confide anything at all to her.
Grandmother Elizabeth (as she was referred to, never Grandma) read tarot cards. She was good at it. My mother was developed as far as my two brothers and I was concerned. She always knew before I did, when I was pregnant. I’m talking about within days. With my brother Bob, it was instant. In her later years, she lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida but knew instantly when Bob’s car was in an accident in New Jersey. She called on the phone within minutes after it happened. The car was empty. Bob was in the house with me at the time.