]]> http://witspdx.com/2012/05/10/rooseveltopen-meadow-end-of-residency-reading/feed/ 0 http://witspdx.com/2012/05/08/chimamanda-adichie-visits-with-students-at-grant-high-school/ http://witspdx.com/2012/05/08/chimamanda-adichie-visits-with-students-at-grant-high-school/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 21:13:05 +0000 MaryR http://witspdx.com/?p=1756 “It’s important to know that all stories have been told, but you can bring something new to them. Inspiration comes from everything; it isn’t something magical. You sit in front of the computer and you hope the writing happens.” Chimamanda Adichie offered this straightforward truth to a group of over one hundred students and faculty from Grant High School, one that any writer, but especially a young writer, would find encouraging, and the audience at Grant was no exception. Adichie is self possessed, poised, and remarkably accessible, and students connected with her easily. When asked how she came to be a writer she responded: “I didn’t always like school, but I always loved to read. In fact, it’s okay if you don’t always love school, but you should love reading, and read everything you can.”

Adichie’s passion for storytelling is palpable, and her belief in the importance of the complete story drew several questions from the audience. Students were curious about her experience since moving to the U.S. from Nigeria, how much of herself she puts into her writing, and how she deals with the kids of narrow-minded stereotypes that she addresses in a TED Talk called “The Danger of the Single Story.” “Stereotypes are not always untrue,” Adichie responded, “but they are incomplete. A single story can be true, but it’s not complete, and if a story is not complete, what’s the point?” She went on to explain that the sort of cultural misunderstanding that produces a stereotype doesn’t have to be a source of conflict or antagonism, but an opportunity for connection: “Ignorance can be a good thing, when you approach it with humility; it becomes a bad thing when it’s arrogant.”

Students and faculty alike were charmed and inspired by Adichie’s confidence, her commitment to telling her own truth, and the remarkable way in which she makes the often intimidating world of art, ideas and writing seem manageable, even fun.  The lively and dynamic conversation undoubtedly had many students wondering as they left, what their own true story might be.

Thank you to Chimamanda Adichie, as well as Grant High School students and faculty for making this visit a memorable one!

–Acacia, WITS intern

Thirty students from all the PPS high schools rocked the Mission Theater during the first city-wide slam poetry competition, Verselandia! Three students from each school (who had won their school’s playoffs) had three minutes each to perform an original poem. Names were drawn at random from a fishbowl and a panel of five judges held up scorecards after each performance.

This was no poetry reading. With a rowdy crowd, an energetic host (the fantastic Anis Mojgani, whose performances on YouTube can bring people to tears), and students with impressive stage presence, it was an entertaining evening. But beyond that, the amount of heart each poet put into their work–including every messy emotion a person can feel–often moved the audience to their feet. There were tales of roller derby bravery, explanations of the perks of dating a nerd, and one student even asked another student to prom.

After the first round, the fifteen students with the highest scores performed a second piece. Then while the judges tallied the scores, Anis Mojgani performed two poems. For all the performances, the audience listened in pin-drop silence, gasped, murmured in agreement, and burst into applause.

Finally, five winners were selected. The two runners-up received $250 gift cards to NorthFace and the three winners received iPads. (Thanks to our generous sponsors!) Congratulations to not only the five winners, but to every student who took the stage at the Mission and who participated in the school slams at Benson, Cleveland, Franklin, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, Metropolitan Learning Center, Roosevelt, and Wilson high schools. We’re already looking forward to next year!

]]> http://witspdx.com/2012/05/07/verselandia/feed/ 0 http://witspdx.com/2012/05/01/slam-champ-anis-mojgani-visits-roosevelt-writing-center/ http://witspdx.com/2012/05/01/slam-champ-anis-mojgani-visits-roosevelt-writing-center/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 21:09:28 +0000 MaryR http://witspdx.com/?p=1737

Anis thinking deeply...

The day after MCing Verselandia! Portland’s first city-wide poetry slam for high school students, World Poetry Slam champion Anis Mojgani visited the Roosevelt High School writing center and met with fifty Rough Riders.  ”Do you ever run into people who don’t take art and poetry seriously as a job?” asked a student.  ”All the time,” said Anis.  He recommended students make writing “a regular part” of their lives and said, “when I was in high school it took me longer to start doing my homework than to do the homework.  Writing is like that.”  Anis then performed several spell-binding poems.  See him perform by clicking here.

“Geography is destiny; Napoleon said that, ” Abraham Verghese recites to a group of Jefferson High School students. He proceeds to describe how this maxim had proved true in his own life. His parents, both Indian teachers living in the Southern state of Kerala, had met and married in Ethiopia, where they had been recruited to teach in Christian schools by the Ethiopian government. “My parents’ geography,” Verghese concluded, “determined my destiny.”

Verghese’s experience as a teacher is clear; he has an impressive natural grace in addressing high school students. He is direct and commanding, yet he speaks to them in a way that they connect with. For example, instead of lecturing, he immediately opens up the discussion, inviting questions. He wants to talk to them about what they want to know. Students ask about his childhood, his sense of place, his career. When did he know he wanted to be a doctor? A writer? These two questions bear very different answers for Verghese. He explains how he became interested in medicine in a superficial way as a very young boy, sensing it would earn him praise from his parents. Then he tells the students how he received his true calling to medicine from a book about a painter with a clubbed foot who becomes a physician. “At that time I realized that not anyone could be a great artist, but anyone who worked hard, and had an appreciation for the human body, could become a physician.”

Verghese doesn’t refer to his writing as a career. “I have only one careeer. I’m a doctor, I see patients every day. I am all physician. And I write.” He tells the Jefferson students how he had begun to write creative non-fiction in the 1990s, when he worked with in a small community in Tennessee where HIV and AIDS had become an unexpected problem. He describes writing articles for medical journals chronicling his work, and how he felt that there was a greater story to be told about his patients and their families. Over the next couple of years he attended the Iowa writer’s workshop, earning an MFA, and published his first book: My Own Country,  about his experiences in East Tennessee, but also pondering themes of displacement, responses to foreignness and the many individuals and families affected by the AIDS epidemic.

Verghese tells the Jefferson students to dream in a concrete way. “Put a picture on your wall of what you want to be, and every day when you look at it, see yourself in that picture. You’d be surprised, often it comes true.” And for Verghese, it has. He explains how, before he finished his first book, he had printed a poster bearing his name and the words ‘New York Times Best Seller!’ Everyone laughs, but the message is received. Here is a man of incredible accomplishment as a doctor and as a writer, and yet, because of his humility, humor and natural intimacy, the students see someone like them: someone who struggles to define himself and his home; someone who has dreamed big.

Thank you to Abraham Verghese as well as the students and faculty at Jefferson who helped make this such a wonderful visit!

-Acacia, WITS intern

The Schnitzer survived. Barely.

Chaos reigned under the marquee Tuesday as precisely 794 book-crazed teenagers, high on fiction and spoiling for a lecture, stormed the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. They came from as far away as Corbett High School in the Gorge to hear Heidi Durrow talk about her Bellwether Prize-winning novel, and this year’s Everybody Reads book, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. It was a homecoming for Ms Durrow, who graduated from Jefferson High School and was joined onstage by her special guest, fellow Scion of Alberta Thomas Lauderdale, who once took the petite spellbinder to lunch at the Chart House for her 13th birthday.

During the Q & A Ms Durrow was asked to advise aspiring young writers. She replied that her novel never really took off, “Until I stopped feeling sad that nobody was helping me, and started to figure out what I could do, right now, in this moment, to help myself.” To paraphrase Derek Jeter, here we thought she was talking about writing.

“Was it just me, or was it a little louder in the Schnitz tonight?” mused one audience member. Yes, actually, it was louder. A lot louder. Listen carefully: that’s the sound of our future.