Beyond The Sentence

Obviously, for anyone spending time in prison, judgement has had a huge impact on their lives. However, quite apart from legal judgements, most people live looking through an almost invisible prism of moment to moment judgements. 'It's Not What You Think' was the theme of our writing exercise in class today. Students wrote in any form about a memory, or a story or poem which explored the theme. DB wrote a pair of tender poems which look at the two sides of judgement. One looked at the outer value judgements, and the voice of other poem is aware of the illusion judgement and moves beyond to compassion. JK wrote a wonderful story based in rural Kenya about an outbreak of typhoid. Joy, in quarantine, distrusts one medical workers seeming interest in her, and wonders what her motives are. When she drops her suspicion and fear, she discovers an opportunity she had never imagined. One of our new students, CNG, wrote about the dangers of instant physical attraction.

In our class today, we did something different. Instead of the students writing individually from a prompt, we worked on a group exercise.  We imagined a place – a bar in a busy town in Iceland; a country none of us has ever been. We spent time on the details of the bar; décor but also its smell and feel. Everyone was given a different character with a few details. We then wrote individually from each point of view about why they were in the bar the night of the shooting. The group read each of their pieces out loud and amongst the laughter, it was clear that the collective piece impressed us all with its breadth and richness. Here is a composite of what the group wrote: Einar Our winter in Iceland was long this year. It is already March and the weather is still cold. It snowed the whole day today. I am alone at the bar. It is 10pm and already full. It’s always full but tonight is Ladies Night – which means free wine. But I don’t want wine. Last time I sat here I

Yesterday in class, our writing prompt was a small brass bell. The bell has a particularly clear tone. Everyone wrote about whatever the bell sound triggered in their memory, or thoughts and associations. One student wrote a spoken word piece - a polemic about the sounds of the apocalypse. Another wrote a poem about bells being part of the fabric of her family's life back home in South Africa. One of our new students wrote about how the bell made her recall the sound of the clock chiming at her grandmother's house in South America. For another, the bell triggered a memory of a train journey in China two years ago. And for another student, the bell recalled a long-forgotten school days memory which inspired a wonderful village life creative nonfiction piece from JM. The task did not focus on telling a story but more on the sensory trigger and allowing that to lead our writers and to lean into and trust their inspiration. As the morning drew to a close, and the s

In our last class before  Christmas, we used a  banana leaf Christmas angel as a writing prompt, and the students were tasked to write about angels. There was some resistance to the theme, perhaps a seasonal overload of angels, but we pushed through.  The class wrote beautifully without any tropes or sentimentality. TM wrote a piece of heartfelt and intimate prose. When she read it out loud, the group heard the germs of a song. Our talented Music Teacher Eric quickly began to arrange the words to music. By the end of the morning, we were all singing the first verse and chorus of the freshly composed song,  My Angel. LMS was particularly taken with the theme and wrote this nuanced poem (below) about her thoughts and ambivalence about angels. My Angel By L.M.S. I stood upon the hills wondering what the world had in store for me. I saw an angel. It smiled at me  but I refused to smile back. I asked myself, Is this angel from the light  or from dar