Poem for my Father: Water Striders

Here's a poem for my father, who loved rowing in this canoe rig.

Water Striders

you are on the dock before me

before the sun, impatient

not waiting, shuffling toward

the rowing-rigged canoe

lifting the stern to launch

and nearly launching yourself

I steady the boat

steady your body

ease you in

strap your feet

shove you off

watch you set the oars

and take your first longed-for pull

behind you I slip into the kayak

paddle to reach you—already

halfway to the small islands

and together stroking the water

skimming over the lake’s skin

slicing and gliding the stillness

we know this won’t last

the sun will crest the trees

motors will sound

voices will carry

the wind will churn the surface

your strength will fail

and your senses, too

cast to lake floor depths

like stones dropping down  

to mussels poking through sand

and leaves caught in crevices

of cool granite shelves

so we pull

against the water

push against the water

skim over the water

taking this lake

one more morning

(c) Holly Thompson   All Rights Reserved

My Sister: Climbing Against the Odds for the Breast Cancer Fund

This coming week is a momentous one for my sister, Pam Thompson, soon to fly to California for the Breast Cancer Fund's mountaineering expedition Climb Against the Odds on Mount Shasta. In March, I had the chance to see my sister in action and I tried keeping up with her as she trained, hiking and running up and down the hills of Milton, Massachusetts, with large bottles of water in her backpack for weights. Pam's challenges with breast cancer, as well as those faced recently by other relatives and friends, were the impetus for me to include the breast cancer challenges faced by Emma's mother in my verse novel The Language Inside. 

This week the Harvard Gazette features Pam and the upcoming Mount Shasta ascent.

The nonprofit Breast Cancer Fund is dedicated to exposing and eliminating the environmental causes of breast cancer. In addition to training for the climb and her work at Boston's Arnold Arboretum, Pam has been busy fundraising for the Breast Cancer Fund.

I'm so proud of my sister climbing against the odds. On June 19, the day of the Mt. Shasta summit attempt, I'll definitely go out for a solidarity hike here in Japan, rain or shine. With each step, I'll be wishing Pam a safe and smooth ascent and descent. And I'll be hoping she gets that incredible view from the top she's been dreaming of. 

COETAIL: Multimedia Poetry Unit Plan

Another post toward obtaining my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

For my final project for Course 2 of the COETAIL program, I focused on creating a unit plan for my author writing residency visits to schools. I visit schools that barely have electricity as well as schools that have 1:1 programs with a laptop or iPad for each student. This unit plan, admittedly, is for schools in which students have easy access to the internet and computers, though not necessarily 1:1.

When I do author visits to schools, we often work on poetry projects, and in some residencies I work with the students to create not just drafts of poems, but revised and polished poems ready for sharing. Beyond sharing in print or online publications or blogposts of text only, I'm eager to see students working in multimedia formats--audio recording plus video; audio recording plus images; images plus text; and other combinations--to help make poetry come alive.

In order to develop this unit, however, I had to get my feet wet in multimedia poetry. I've long used PowerPoint to share poetry with students, but I had yet to create my own recordings or projects with iMovie or YouTube Editor or other platforms. My aim was to create a selection five or six projects with different combinations of media, but I had to scale back to several projects, two of which, created with iMovie, I've shared in the unit plan below as examples for students, in combination with the many other examples by other poets and creators shared in my previous multimedia poetry blogpost.

Here is my example of a themed project "Running Poems."



And here is my example project of a narrative poem "Cod."



Here is the link to the Multimedia Poetry Unit I designed, also embedded below (which, apologies, looks absurd embedded in this narrow theme for this blog).



Reflecting on this unit plan and my multimedia poetry projects, I realize that I should have started creating multimedia poetry ages ago. I loved working on this! I see so many possibilities for motivating and inspiring students to create poems that can then be further enhanced by technology and shared beyond the classroom or school.

I discovered my own shortcomings--insufficient iMovie editing experience; difficulty reading without text in front of me; my own slow perfectionist approach. I was made aware of the areas in which I need to experiment more so that leading this sort of project as a guest author in a school will go smoothly.

I see so many applications for this multimedia poetry unit--within language and literature classes and  EFL/ESL/EAL programs; as narrative or other types of poetry projects; or as themed projects in connection with community service or international volunteering. I look forward to experimenting more with poetry and technology in the classroom and developing more of my own examples of tech-enhanced poems to share.

  

COETAIL: Branding a Love of Writing and Story

Another post toward obtaining my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

After thinking about Seth Godin's words about Tribe Management and reading through Tribes and Tribes: The Case Studies and mulling over Mashable's Personal Branding 101, I find myself comfortable with thinking about tribes and communities, but less comfortable with branding. Why?

Tribes are about belonging and about common aims and interests. Branding is about selling your product or your ideas. And I often find myself at odds with trying to market my products--my books-- since my true love is not marketing or the business of books but, rather, writing fiction--sculpting words into stories, in prose and in verse. 

Authors are supposed to have an author brand; each book (or series) may also have its own brand. By now I have something of a fiction brand--I think Terry Hong nailed it in the BookDragon review of The Language Inside:  "I’m growing rather partial to Holly Thompson‘s ethnic-blending, boundary-crossing, expectation-defying titles for young adults." Thank you, Terry!

I'm definitely more comfortable thinking about personal branding and tribe management concepts when I think of "selling" my ideas rather than a product. So, what ideas am I trying to "sell"? As an educator, what I try to sell to my "customers"--my students--is a love of writing.

Love of writing is the foundation of so many of the tribes I belong to: SCBWI, SCBWI Japan, AFCC, chat groups like #KidLitChat or #YALitChat, communities of poet educators, and on and on.

Without doubt I could better define my author/writing teacher/educator brand and could improve at communicating just how I "sell" the love of writing in both verse and prose to students at my university and at the elementary, middle and high schools I visit. I can redo my website and blog design. I can share more about the ways I'm constantly adapting my lessons, workshops and presentations; more about how my students build stories and poems; more about my writing process; and more about the multimedia poetry projects I'm developing.

But of course, after all this COETAIL homework reading, what do you suppose lingers with me? Not Godin's words, not a particular how-to guide to branding, but rather the stories within Tribes: The Case Studies. Read through the many "case studies," and you, too, will start thinking of your own tribe stories, tales of a tribe you belong to or established or fell into by accident, maybe even literally. Story is everything, our mirror on the world, our means of visiting other worlds. As the late Chinua Achebe said, "The story is our escort, without it we are blind."

So here is a little story. As a young teen I was confident of nothing, but I was writing poems, finding my love of words. At a family gathering, I sat down in an armchair, and an aunt who was active in the arts knelt down on the floor beside me (insisting on kneeling). She asked what I wanted to be. "A writer," I whispered, startling both myself and her at the confession. "Perfect," she answered. "We don't have enough good writers." As if she just assumed I'd be a "good" writer. Her assurance and faith in me that day we talked favorite authors and poets and story and drama gave me a shot of confidence that had been missing, the courage to try to gain admission to the tribe of writers.

Now when I visit middle and high schools, at the end of each talk there are usually one or two students who linger, hand me a poem or a chapter from their novel-in-progress, and breathlessly confess that they, too, want to be a writer. "Perfect," I answer. "We don't have enough good writers," and we talk writing like they're already in the tribe. I know they'll be "good" if they believe they will; they'll be "good" if they love it enough.

COETAIL: Poetry, Video and Social Media

Another post toward obtaining my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

As an author who often does school visits that include poetry workshops, I'm often asked if there can be a culminating publication of works created during or after my visit. Of course! is my answer. But there's no reason to think only of print projects. Poetry, tech tools and social media combine easily. In addition to readings, slams, and magazines, I'd like to see multimedia projects become end products of my residencies and school visits. I'm steadily working on my own poetry projects to share via social media and to have ready to share with students. Meanwhile, here are some samples of inspiration that we can offer students. 

• Videos of poets reading poems such as those by Michael Rosen here performing "Mum's Dead Coat". 

Or Benjamin Zephaniah performing "Faceless"

• Longer spoken word performances like those shared in the TED Spoken-word Fireworks playlist and Phil Kaye's bicultural poem "Teeth": 

and the amazing Hollie McNish performing Mathematics.

• Multimedia projects like these Elucidata projects created by BU Creative Writing Students. Elementary school students can also make blogged videos with images like the list poetry blogs and videos shared in Media Literacy Projects in MediaSpot.org. 

• Collaborative poem performances, such as When Love Arrives by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, later made into a typography video by Melvin Alvarez:

• Poem plus video plus images plus music such as Bill Yake's "Praising the Fish":

• Text plus video plus music such as Sandra Beasly's "I Don't Fear Death"

• Poem Movies like those on the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School site, including this one "According to Bread" by Leslea Newman. 
• Video poems such as those collected on Moving Poems including "The Barking Horse" by Patrick Sheridan.

Poets&Writers in its offering of six video poems suggests that "the video poem may be ushering a whole new demographic to poetry." The comments section offers plenty more links. 

One challenge in the classroom when taking on such projects, even with the simplest tools, is that more time may get devoted to videography or fiddling with iMovie or YouTube Editor. As I embark on these projects in the classrooms I visit, I want to ensure that the students are given ample time to focus on their words first. I want to ensure time for their poems to percolate and grow--time for thoughtful, focused revision, feedback and more revision. Then, students will be invited to explore creative ways to share their poems with the world. 

COETAIL--Flash Fiction and Student-created "Textbooks"

A post toward obtaining my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

In the recent COETAIL class, one question asked of participants was, "Can we have our students find/analyze/create up-to-the minute textbooks for our classes? How would this change the dynamic of the classroom?"

Courses in the arts, including creative writing, have long tended to be fairly student-centered. I recall a version of this approach pre-Internet at NYU's Creative Writing Program in a Craft of Fiction course in which the professor asked students to create the syllabus list of contemporary novels to be read that semester and to take turns leading the discussions in teams each week. There was no set list of texts. There was no textbook. Students determined the content and direction and challenge level of the course with guidance from the professor.

I'd love teach a course in which students create "textbooks" for a literature class or creative writing class--this could work for various age and ability levels, for different genres, online or face to face. I can envision projects, units or entire terms. Mulling this over, I came up with this example of a Flash Fiction lit/creative writing class:

For this course in flash fiction students would start by searching for information on the genre, defining the genre, its history, characteristics, and trends, and searching for flash fiction stories online, as well as links to print anthologies of flash fiction or literary journals that regularly feature flash stories. The information and resources would be shared among classmembers and with the public via social media tools. Next, the course would have students selecting a set number of flash stories to read from the resources, then sharing and commenting on the stories they selected, as well as commenting on stories selected by classmates. After that, students would create flash stories of their own, gathering feedback on drafts, revising and editing. Finally, the class collection of stories would be disseminated to the public as a group publication, performance of readings, blog posts, podcasts, audio anthology (such as a school version of Grub Street's The Drum), video readings, or other format.

So where's the textbook in all this? A resulting student-created textbook chapter? A final ebook with the resources, comments and class-created flash stories? Or is a "textbook" really needed at all? 

In March an EdCampColumbus a conference session was titled Textbooks are Dead, People: The Relevance of Student Created Ebooks in the Common Core (here is the Storify of tweets on the session with some interesting links). And I like Shawn McCusker's textbook project, described in The Textbook is Dead, Long Live the Textbook! What 1:1 is doing to Traditional Classroom Resources.  

One reason for having a textbook is convenience, to save teachers and students from busywork and from having to reinvent the wheel each year, so perhaps my flash fiction project or course would be begun by one student group and further built on in a following semester or year by other student groups. Perhaps students would be creating a textbook chapter. Or perhaps, we are simply moving toward crowd-sourced "textbooks." Or perhaps we should just shift our focus to resources and information.

Asian Festival of Children's Content (AFCC) 2013--Books, Friends and Desserts

I'm back home in Japan after the Asian Festival of Children's Content 2013 in Singapore. As always, there's a bit of post-AFCC let down after such a vibrant gathering of writers, illustrators, translators, editors, publishers, librarians and readers from all over Asia.

For the first year AFCC was held at the National Library Singapore. That pod way up top, amid flitting swallows, was where a number of events were held and where I gave my keynote talk.

This year I was speaking in the translation seminar, a new track for the conference, on editing stories in translation--reflecting on my experience with the Tomo anthology. This track was organized by translator Avery Fischer Udagawa and also featured Alexander O. Smith--both are Tomo story translators. How nice to meet Tomo fans from around Asia! See the full post on the Tomo blog.

Tomo fans!

The country of focus for AFCC 2013 was Malaysia (2014 will be India), so there was a Malaysia night celebration...

with some amazing desserts.

My keynote talk was Stories Set in Asia: Selling Them Overseas, including key questions agents and editors tend to ask.

Not long after the keynote was a launch celebration for The Language Inside outside in the plaza. Thanks to Bookaburra Books of Singapore for handling book sales for all of my books.  

On the first evening of the Writers and Illustrators Conference at AFCC, the Singtel Asian Picture Book Awards and the Hedwig Anuar Children's Book Awards were announced.

Winners: Author Edmund Lim, Illustrator Tan Zi Xi, Author Debra Chong,  Illustrator Bolormaa Baasansuren

I was so pleased to see Japan-based Bolormaa Baasansuren of Mongolia win first prize for illustration for her book Old City, and to see her husband Gambaatar Ichinnorov shortlisted for the text of this book. Bolormaa had shared a dummy of this book with illustrator John Shelley and me for feedback in 2007 after our workshops in Mongolia.

Bolormaa Baasansuren, Rama Ramachadran (Executive Director National Book Development Council of Singapore), Gambaatar Ichinnorov

Here are some of the Japan folk mobbing congratulating Bolormaa.

Akiko Sueyoshi, Gambaatar Ichinnorov, Bolormaa Baasansuren, Akiko Beppu, Etsuko Nozawa, Naomi Kojima, Holly Thompson

Between sessions I checked out and purchased books--from around Asia...

including a copy of Longhouse Days by Jainal Amambing, whose work I'd featured along with Bolormaa Baasansuren's in my article about the Noma Concours in Kyoto Journal, Issue 67, a few years ago.

I attended as many sessions as I could during the conference--Challenge, Trauma and Recovery in YA with authors Susanne Gervay and Wendy Orr; Asian-Themed Publishing in the U.S. with Shen's Book publisher Renee Ting; Celebrating Diversity in Children's Picture books with IBBY president Ahmad Khairuddin; Grabbing Your Readers' Attention with authors Candy Gourlay and Kathleen Ahrens. the future of publishing in Digital Space; First Pages critiques; blogging and more.

Authors Kathleen Ahrens and Candy Gourlay

Project Splash! Asia was also celebrated--this features an annotated bibliography of water-themed stories from Asia. They are still collecting titles of stories to grow the bibliography further, so feel free to send them in via PaperTigers.org. (The Wakame Gatherers was featured in this list.)

The Splash Asia Team 

Splash Asia books at the National Library Singapore

SCBWI has a major presence each year at AFCC with regional SCBWI teams from around Asia and Oceania plus SCBWI members from regions around the world in attendance.

SCBWI Regional Team members from Malaysia, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and India

AFCC is as much about the conversations with new and old friends as it is about the sessions and keynotes and special events. Already I'm missing those friends and looking forward to AFCC 2014 (save the dates! May 31-June 4, 2014).

Attendees from Japan with Mr. Rama Ramachadran

Author and AFCC board member Nury Vittachi, Corinne Robson of PaperTigers and author Candy Gourlay

And I look forward to more salted caramel gelato, sold across the street from the National Library. Yes, I had another cup just before my taxi ride to Changi airport.

It's Official! Summer Teaching at Grub Street in Boston

It's official--I'll be teaching several classes at Boston's creative writing hub Grub Street on Boylston Street this summer while I'm back in Massachusetts.

The summer 2013 workshops have now been announced on the Grub website, and I'll be teaching classes in July and August.

Here's what I'll be teaching:

• Young Adult Novel Workout  Monday-Thursday, 2:30-5:30pm from July 8-11th
• Story Seeds for Young Adult Writing: Preserving, Sowing and Growing YA Story Ideas  Friday, July 12th, 10:30am-1:30pm
• Tackling Novel Revision: Techniques and Tips  Friday, August 9th, 10:00am-5:00pm
• Telling Stories in Verse: An Intro to Narrative Poetry and Verse Novels Friday, August 16th, 10:00am-5:00pm

And there are lots more workshops offered at Grub Street in Boston this summer--details here. I'm so looking forward to meeting the vibrant Boston writing community.

Happy Book Birthday to Suzanne Kamata, author of Gadget Girl

I've been so excited about this book, having watched it grow over the last few years. Today, fellow SCBWI Japan member, longtime Shikoku resident, and writing friend Suzanne Kamata makes her YA novel debut with Gadget Girl.

Gadget Girl recently was the winner in the young adult category of the 2013 Paris Book Festival annual competition honoring the best of international publishing.

Here is the description of Gadget Girl:

Aiko Cassidy is fifteen, has cerebral palsy, and lives in a small Midwestern town. For most of her life, she has been her sculptor mother’s muse. But now she no longer wants to post for the figures that have made her mother famous. She works on her own dream, becoming a sought-after manga artist with a secret identify. When Aiko’s mother invites her to Paris for a major exhibition, Aiko balks. She’d rather go to Japan, the manga capital of the world. But when she gets to France and meets a hot waiter with a passion for manga, things change.

And some review excerpts:

"Kamata's latest is a sharp, unusual coming-of-age novel...Awkwardly and believably, this sensitive novel reveals an artistic teen adapting to family, disability and friendships in all their flawed beauty." --Kirkus Reviews

"Kamata’s love and intimate knowledge of Paris streets add atmosphere to this smart and surprising coming-of-age story. Readers will feel whisked away by the romance of an artistic life and appreciate the sensitivity and honesty with which Kamata writes about Aiko’s physical and emotional journeys." --Publishers Weekly

Hooray! I'm so pleased that this book will receive some well deserved worldwide attention. Congratulations, Suzanne!

The Language Inside and Inspiration from Poet Julia Tavalaro

When I was a graduate student in the NYU Creative Writing Program in the 1980s, the Goldwater writing workshops at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island had recently been launched by poet Sharon Olds, and I signed up as a volunteer in the program. I was terrified. At NYU I was studying as a fiction writer; I was a timid closet poet. I was also squeamish in hospitals and had no experience whatsoever working with the chronically ill or severely disabled.

At Goldwater Hospital, I was first assigned to assist two patients in writing--one a gunshot wound victim writing an autobiographical novel, and another, poet Julia Tavalaro. Julia had had a brain-stem stroke some twenty years prior in 1966 at the age of 32 and had been subsequently paralyzed and locked in. Unable to speak, she’d been assumed to be unresponsive for six years despite efforts by her sister to convince doctors that she was cognizant. A speech therapist finally took the initiative to ask Julia several key questions to which Julia was able to blink in response. From then on, Julia was able to communicate by looking up to indicate yes, and eventually, through very slight head movement, to operate a wheelchair and write with a computer.

With Julia, I used a letter board as instructed, pointing to the columns of letters one by one then running down the letters until she looked up, then writing down the selected letter—this was how she communicated her poems, letter by letter. But I was shy and intimidated, and Julia controlled our conversations. She was bossy and could be mean—once when I called an aide in to help me, Julia spelled the word “stupid.” I know she meant me. I admit I was not very effective working with Julia.

Ultimately I was reassigned to a different patient with a mellower temperament. I felt somewhat defeated but knew that another volunteer and a more accomplished poet might be better suited to working with Julia. I did start speaking up to comment on Julia’s poems in the group workshops, and over time I became bolder at communicating with her when I saw her.

Some years later, through the assistance of poet Richard Tayson, Julia wrote her memoir, Look Up for Yes (Kodansha International, 1997). She was even able to move out of Goldwater Hospital. She lived on with her fierce spirit, writing poems and looking up for yes, until 2003.

Anyone who worked with Julia was profoundly affected by her. She had a fiery determination. She was stubborn. Angry. Crass. Funny. Defiant. Devious. She was unforgettable, and I knew that one day I’d write a story about a girl who works with a brainstem stroke victim. It took me years to finally tackle the story and to take inspiration and courage from Julia to create the character of Zena in my verse novel The Language Inside, in which Emma, a high school student raised in Japan, finds herself volunteering at a long-term care center in Massachusetts assisting Zena in writing her poems.

In writing The Language Inside, I knew that the poems Zena and Emma created, as well as the letter board conversations, would be central to the story. In addition to writing the entire novel in verse, I had to write poems in Zena’s voice, in Emma’s voice, and in the voice of Samnang, the Cambodian-American volunteer assisting Cambodian elders in the long-term care center. The poems they discussed in their writing sessions would also be important to the story. The novel became infused with poetry. Poetry impacted the action of the characters and the action fed the poems the characters wrote.

Now, some 25 years after I first met Julia Tavalaro, my novel The Language Inside (Delacorte/Random House, May 2013) has just published. Now that I am older and not quite so “stupid” (I hope), how I wish I could share the news with Julia. I know she’d have something wry to spell out to me—probably along the lines of “What took you so long?”

Thank you, Sharon Olds, for leading the unforgettable workshops at Goldwater Hospital.

And thank you, Julia Tavalaro, for showing me what perseverance really means.

The below excerpt is from “Poem in Mind” by Julia Tavalaro  (printed in Look Up for Yes by Julia Tavalaro and Richard Tayson)

Poem in Mind

Take this poem home

Read it no feed it to the mind

The mind fabulously famished

The mind oh so hungry

**********