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February 2023: For Marquette University’s 2023 Writing Innovation Symposium and its theme of “Writing as….” Melissa Kaplan and I were invited to be plenary workshop presenters. Our workshop titled “Exploring Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning through the Lansing Community College Community-Generated Poetry Project” used materials created in collaboration with Dr. Jenn Fishmann and gathered from students and educators across the country throughout Fall 2022. The project’s general theme was Trauma Informed Teaching and Learning in order to connect to the plenary talk focused on Trauma Informed Pedagogy given my Dr. Melssa Tayles.
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After honoring and sifting through anonymous student responses to various prompts (see the specific prompt below each poem) 25 poets created the following 5 poems: “What have they taught us?”, “Completely Packed”, Snakes and Foxes in the Library of Alexandria”, Too much intentional listening”
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“What have they taught us?”
A sea of blank screens
A teacher wearing a cape
A professor with a mask
Smiling at a computer
Outside the monitor’s edges
PJ pants underneath.
One line pep talks
“Zoom will not defeat us.”
The years they were alive
A spiral for many
A near impossible experience.
Educating through it all
We learned new things
We’re grateful
To the people who couldn’t stop working
Hands reaching through
Backs hunched
Holding one of those ancient webcams.
Unprecedented times
For those who struggled
In spite of it all
They still taught.
Or something like that.
Poets: Maxwell Gray, Lilly Campbell, Jenna Green, Margaret Perrow, Derek Handley, Darci Thoune
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Completely Packed
The place of relaxing,
Peaceful enlightenment.
Alone.
A stressful mind,
The comfort of a repeated story;
The quiet zone.
I would name it The Alchemist’s Bedroom.
Figuring it out
by trying.
The simple liquid compounds
are going to blow up.
Me typing
on my bed,
Music rising,
Return to zero.
Poets: Sara Heaser, Wendy Fall, Jennifer Kontny, Blessing Uwisike, Aleisha Balestri
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Snakes and Foxes in The Library of Alexandria
A warm canyon of constant, slow wonder.
The fox rushes, falls up Mt Everest, eager and free.
Finds a bird constructing a library,
beside a screaming exhilarating snake hall,
Some snakes boxed in grinding,
Investing in this chaotic hell.
But, in a museum of devotion,
Calls “Oh, sweet and sour solemnity!”
Aggravated, the snakes respond “ Am I an exhausted
Obedient guinea pig?”
“Don’t be a trapped sloth running an obstacle course.
Though it is an occasionally dreadful monkey marathon, anticipating makes a better forest.”
Snakes and foxes in the library of Alexandria.
Poets: Grant Gosizk, Ryan Vojtisek, Nora Boxer, Nancy Nguyen, Rachel La Due
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Too much intentional listening
we are a parliament of
owls on ancient twisted trees
keenly watching
to affirm a forest
with curiosity/ and awe
Individual, collaborative,
dangerous creative
continuallyinmotion
harvesting hope is spoon-catching hazy
raindrops
affirming forest empathy,
Heart dancing furious, tail switching
energized, hopeful
guardians, fluctuating and
Continuallyinmotion
Poets: Sass Denny, Kaia Simon, Jenn Fishman, Mitch R. Murray
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“Remote Generation”
To those who tried, those who failed, and those who succeeded.
Behind glass.
Computer with a mask
Teachers will always have our backs
COVID viruses sticking all over them like burrs.
A ball and chain but instead of a ball it’s a laptop.
A bit of glow on their face from a computer screen.
Will you be the ones to cure us?
Light that shows the way.
The crying comes to an end–she survived.
Hands reaching.
Let the fire out.
Poets: Ryan, Claire, Cisco, Melissa T., Kerry
