Category Archives: spoken word

Creating Community through Spoken Word

The 2010 WITS Writer Orientation featured special guests Michele Kotler and Keith Kaminski from the Community Word Project (CWP) in New York. Our friends at the CWP have given a great deal of thought to preparing writers to teach in classrooms. We at WITS Houston invited them down to see what it was all about. As you might guess, we were very impressed.

One of the cornerstones of CWP is creating poetry and art as a group. Michele and Keith led our writers in an exercise to help us produce a community performance. The process was fun and exciting. Have a listen?

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, Lesson plan, spoken word, wits alliance, writer, writers in the schools, writing prompts. Tags: Writers Resources. Leave a comment

Nov. ’10

Life Is Living Festival on Saturday, Nov. 6th

This Saturday the Life Is Living Festival will take place at Emancipation Park 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. in Houston. WITS Writers Deborah Wiggins, Emanuelee Bean, and the students of Meta-Four Houston will lead spoken word performances and activities. The festival is sponsored by the Mitchell Center at UH and a host of other partner organizations. It is free and open to the public.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: art, creativity, education, event, Houston, spoken word, writers in the schools. Tags: Mitchell Center. Leave a comment

Sep. ’10

Tune In to the Poet’s Corner Friday

During the Summer Creative Writing Workshops, WITS students visited Taping For The Blind, a nonprofit whose mission is to enrich the lives of individuals with visual, physical and learning disabilities by transforming what is seen into what is heard. Tune in this Friday, September 17, and listen as Emma, Alyssa, Jivanni, Leah, David, and Vincent read their poems on The Poet’s Corner. You can tune in at 88.7 FM KUHF, or following Friday’s broadcast, download the archived recording, “WITS Students,” by clicking this link.

HISD’s Instructional Media TV stopped by to capture the experience. View the segment.

Posted by jrwatson5. Categories: poetry, spoken word, student, video, writers in the schools. Tags: Broadcasting, creative writing, KUHF, radio, taping for the blind. Leave a comment

May. ’10

Menil Reading Tonight at 7:00 PM

Writers in the Schools and The Menil Collection will present The Watchful Eye, a reading in response to the Torres-Garcia and Cattelan exhibitions, tonight at 7:00 PM in the museum foyer. The reading will feature both WITS students and University of Houston students from their undergraduate literary magazine Glass Mountain. Join us for a night of creative writing inspired by art, including the poem below.

"Untitled" (2003) by Maurizio Cattelan

The Boy on the Roof

Maybe he was flying
in a helicopter
or a plane
and he jumped down
by parachute.
Or maybe
he got lost in the attic
and found a trap door
going up
instead of down.

By Camille, 3rd grade

Posted by Kristina McDonald. Categories: art, event, Houston, poetry, spoken word, story, student, writers in the schools. Tags: cattelan, ekphrasis, glass mountain, houston reading, menil collection, torres-garcia, writers in the schools. 2 Comments

May. ’10

Tonight: Marc Bamuthi Joseph at the Eldorado Ballroom

The UH Mitchell Center for the Arts brings the spoken word artist and hip hop dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph to the Eldorado Ballroom at 7 pm.

A performance/presentation by artist-in-residence Marc Bamuthi Joseph takes place tonight on the Project Row Houses campus. Life Is Living: Houston will be an arts and environmental justice festival scheduled for November 6, 2010, at Emancipation Park in Houston’s Third Ward. Life Is Living is a national campaign celebrating sustainability and hip hop culture in neighborhoods across the U.S. including those in Chicago, Harlem, and Oakland. Local Houston partners include Project Row Houses, Aerosol Warfare, Youth Advocates, Last Organic Outpost, Workshop Houston, and various other departments at the University of Houston.

Location: Project Row Houses’ Eldorado Ballroom, 2310 Elgin St.
Admission: FREE

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, nature, place, spoken word, writer, writers in the schools. Tags: Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Project Row Houses. Leave a comment

Apr. ’10

Advice to Myself

Click above to hear Daazmen read his poem.

Don’t sit down and watch TV all day
every day. Go outside and play basketball
with some friends and have a great time.
Don’t stay home watching Family Guy
or Sports Center and wishing you
are that LeBron James guy or the next
A-Rod or whoever.
Go make progress.
Go make things happen
like things have never happened before.

By Daazmen, 8th grade

This poem is featured as part of the 2010 A Poem A Day campaign, a National Poetry Month celebration by WITS that features a different poem by a WITS student every day during April. Click on the logo to the left to learn more.

Posted by Kristina McDonald. Categories: national poetry month, poem a day, poetry, spoken word, student. Tags: a poem a day, advice poem, national poetry month. Leave a comment

Feb. ’10

Armadilla

I once saw you on a road, Armadilla, with prickles and bushes,

but you were eating corn on the road. Armadilla, I warn you,

don’t eat the corn off the road or else you will have a bullet in

your head for eating the corn off the road. It’s for the deer, not

you, so we can kill the deer, not you, because why would we

want to shoot you? So run away, run away and eat the corn

off someone else’s ranch for all the rest of these days.

by Steven, 3^rd Grade

[Armadillo illustration by author Jan Brett]

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: animal, spoken word, student, writer, writers in the schools. Tags: armadillo. Leave a comment

Feb. ’10

Poetry Reading with Merrilee Cunningham & Katharine Jager

The Cultural Enrichment Center of the University of Houston Downtown will host a poetry reading tomorrow (Tuesday, February 9) at 5:30 PM featuring WITS writer Merrilee Cunningham and Katharine Jager. The reading will be held at the Robertson Auditorium on the 3rd floor of UHD’s Academic Building.

WITS writer Merrilee Cunningham holds a B.A. degree in creative writing from Northwestern University where she studied under the poet Stephen Spender, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature from Vanderbilt University. Her poetic and scholarly works have been published in On, Versus, Visions, The Ball State Review, Renaissance and Reformation, the South Central Bulletin of the Modern Language Association and many other places. She edited On Magazine, a collection of poetry, while at Vanderbilt. After coming to University of Houston–Downtown, she edited Humanities in the South for seven years.

Katharine Jager is a poet and a medieval scholar. She received her M.F.A. in poetry from New York University and her Ph.D. in medieval studies from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, Medieval Perspectives, The Gettysburg Review, Canteen, Friends Journal, and the Bellevue Review.

Who: Merrilee Cunningham and Katherine Jager
What: A poetry reading
When: Tuesday, February 9 at 5:30 PM
Where: Robertson Auditorium, 3rd floor of Academic Building, University of Houston Downtown
Cost: Free!

Posted by Kristina McDonald. Categories: event, Houston, poetry, spoken word. Tags: houston poetry reading, katharine jager, merrilee cunningham. 2 Comments

Feb. ’10

WITS Writers to Read at Brazos 2/5/10

This month’s Gulf Coast reading will feature WITS writers Janine Joseph and Liz Countryman. The reading will be held tonight at 7:00 PM at Brazos Bookstore.

Born in the Philippines, Janine Joseph is a Ph.D. student in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston, where she is also a senior reader for Gulf Coast. She holds degrees from UC Riverside and the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where she taught with the Starworks Foundation and Community Word Project. She is a recipient of a 2009 Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation Fellowship for New Americans. Her work has most recently appeared in Third Coast, Spoon River Poetry Review, Nimrod, and in the chapbook Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets.

Liz Countryman earned her B.A. from Tufts University and her M.F.A. from the University of Maryland. She has been awarded scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Vermont Studio Center, from whom she received the Brown Foundation Award in 2008. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, where she also serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast. Her poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Makeout Creek, Forklift, Ohio, and ink node.

Posted by Kristina McDonald. Categories: event, Houston, spoken word, writers in the schools. Tags: gulf coast, janine joseph, liz countryman. Leave a comment

Jan. ’10

Rojo que te quiero rojo (Red, I Love You, Red)

Rojo el agua salpicando rojo en las hojas
Rojo el cielo
Roja la luz
Rojo los animales
Rojo el tronco sobre el suelo y las hojas sobre los árboles
Rojo, que te quiero, Rojo
Roja la sangre
Rojo el mar
Rojo el pájaro sobre el árbol
Rojo el corazón en el cuerpo con fuego ardiendo
Rojo, que te quiero, Rojo
Rojo los ruidos
Rojas mis lágrimas
Rojo el mundo sobre el espacio
~
Red, the water sprinkling on the leaves
Red, the sky
Red, the light
Red, the animals
Red, the tree trunk on the ground and the leaves around the trees
Red, I love you, Red
Red blood
The red sea
Red is the bird perched on the tree
Red is the heart in the body blazing on fire
Red, I love you, Red
Red noises
Red, my tears
Red, the earth suspended in space

By Jakeline, 3rd grade
[photo by komarovart via flickr]

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: art, ode, poetry, Spanish, spoken word, student. Tags: color ode, color poem, red, red poem. Leave a comment

Nov. ’09

Houston, Get Wired with Poetry 11/13/09

Former WITS Writer Radames Ortiz and Houston poets Lupe Mendez and Byron Jones have joined forces to bring Houston @Wired: A Multimedia Explosion of Poetry. @Wired is a revolutionary approach to exposing the literary masses to a new type of poetry reading. By incorporating social media, music, song, imagery and technology to enhance their poetic performances, @Wired seeks to reconstruct the poetry reading and to engage local creatives to actively participate in making a unique event even more special.

WHEN: Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8 pm

WHERE: Rudolph Projects ArtScan Gallery, 1836 Richmond Ave, Houston, TX 77098

COST: Free

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: art, event, Houston, poetry, spoken word, video, where are we now, writers in the schools. Tags: ArtScan, music, Radames Ortiz, technology, twitter. Leave a comment

Nov. ’09

Marc Bamuthi Joseph in Houston 11/7/09

On November 7, 2009, explosive spoken word poet/choreographer Marc Bamuthi Joseph launches Houston’s own “Life is Living,” a national campaign exploring the changing perspectives on environmental justice. The kick-off will feature hip hop performances, competitions, and participatory activities by a range of Houston organizations. For more information, click here.

Location: Discovery Green Park, 1500 McKinney St

When: Nov. 7th, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Cost: Free

lifeislivingbig_62415

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, Houston, nature, poetry, spoken word, writers in the schools. Tags: Life is Living, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Leave a comment

Sep. ’09

Meta-Four Houston Kickoff on Sept. 12

lauren whitehead by steve savage Meta-Four Houston, a provider of spoken-word and slam poetry workshops for youth, will begin the school year with a free training session for poets, teachers, librarians and other adults who mentor young poets, in partnership with the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. The free workshop will be from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12 on UH’s campus at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts in Room 207. It will be led by two Youth Speaks Inc. staff members: Hodari Davis and Lauren Whitehead. That afternoon there will be a free writing workshop from 1pm – 3pm for youth poets in the same location.

On Saturday evening, DiverseWorks will host a spoken word performance at 8 p.m. It will feature Lauren Whitehead and students from the local Meta-Four slam team. Pay what you wish tickets can be reserved on the DiverseWorks site or you can pay at the door.

Posted by WITS Houston. Categories: event, spoken word, teaching, writers in the schools. Leave a comment

Sep. ’09

NANO Reading Series Inaugural Reading Sept. 8

Houston literary journal NANO Fiction and local bookstore Kaboom Books are excited to announce the Nano Reading Series at Kaboom Books.

This monthly reading series seeks to bridge the academic and urban worlds of the Houston writing scene. Writers are selected from a pool of local applicants and each reading will feature two writers per month. Local writers and open mic enthusiasts are encouraged to visit nanofiction.org and email writing samples to nanoreadingseries@gmail.com.

To commemorate the series, limited edition mini-chapbooks will be produced combining work from each month’s readers. The readings will be held at Kaboom Books at the intersection of Houston Ave. and Bayland on the second Tuesday of every month at 7:30pm.

The inaugural reading will be held on September 8, and will feature readings by Hayan Charara and WITS writer Sarah Strickley. Refreshments will be served.

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Hayan Charara is the author of two poetry collections, The Alchemist’s Diary and The Sadness of Others, and a recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He’s the editor of Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Born in Detroit, he lived for many years in New York City and moved to Texas in 2003.

# # #

Sarah A. Strickley is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Grant, the Glenn Schaeffer Award for Fiction and the Swink Magazine Editors’ Award for Emerging Writers. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow, and a graduate of the Program in Creative Writing at Ohio University. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Review, Oxford American magazine, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. She is currently the features editor of two leading visual art magazines: Watercolor Artist and The Pastel Journal.