Personified Poetry: Sarah Kay's "A Love Letter"

I think this past month is the longest hiatus I've taken from blogging as I adjust my writerly wings and perform the juggling act of several new jobs. Among them is teaching another creative writing class through "Take My Word For It!" to 4th and 5th graders after school. You can view student excerpts read at the fall bookstore finale here.

The program director tried out a few prompts on some of us teachers as she was piloting an online creative writing class for teens. Most of my time is consumed with copywriting tours these days, so finding these exercises on my computer inspires me to bring back some of that creative juice into my hours, as I hope it does for you!

Here's a video of spoken word poet, Sarah Kay, performing “A Love Letter." Her project was to write a series of love letters between inanimate objects, using personification. In this piece she has composed a love letter from a toothbrush to a bicycle tire. 

Listen to her piece, followed by my own, and then try your hand at it. (Comments welcome!)

Here's mine:

Ball, you bounce around me

Like a rubber stamp

Marking territory

As I color the blacktop,

My slender chalk stalks

Drawing this pastel town we inhabit

You, always playing games

Passing me over or just rolling through

While I wash off with the rain.

First Friday Author Feature: Sandra Cisneros

I wasn't able to get to an author reading for this month's feature, so I decided to report on one of my favorite writers: Sandra Cisneros. I did have the pleasure of seeing her interviewed at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco many years ago. What stands out in my mind from that event is not anything she said or read, but how she demonstrated a myriad of ways to wear a Mexican shawl she had draped over her shoulders.

On her website Cisneros says, "The process of writing is like making a garment, and I often find myself making buttons long before I know what the dress they go on will look like."

Cisneros's work includes eight books: poems, short stories and novels. I 'discovered' House on Mango Street in my college bookstore when I was 17 years old (over two decades ago). Last week I revisited Woman Hollering Creek from my bathtub. Her poetry and lyrical prose is lovely to read aloud, the way the words roll off your tongue.

The following video was made by a student from her visit to Seward school in Chicago in 1992. I think it speaks for itself. Look forward to her upcoming book on writing titled Writing in My Pajamas!