Brave New Words

Brave New Words was on Saturday (April 18, 2009)! I met people like Matt Gano and Jourdan Keith (who are awesome, by the way). I even got five minutes of stage time... Talk about nerve-wracking! I read five poems: Riddle Poem: Red, Red Rose, Riddle Poem: Slipping Silk, Everlasting Night, Rediscovered Memories, and Nightmares On Fire. The last three were Slam poems.

In the morning, Matt taught a workshop kind of like the one he did the day before (on Friday, both Jourdan and Matt did workshops). He gave us a prompt ("What do you want most in the universe? Nothing material, though, guys") and set us to free write. Yesterday's prompt was "What do you hear when you put your ear to the world?" I ended up writing a fiction thing for that one, and a poem at Brave New Words, though I didn't read it.

Jourdan's workshop on Friday was about Haibun, a form of Haiku. It's like a journal entry with a Haiku in it somewhere. It's usually at the end, though. She told us to look in six directions before we went outside: left, right, forward, behind, up, and in. Then we were to write about what we saw in each of those directions - not much, just a line or two. After we went inside again, she told us to incorporate a line or two into a memory, told in the present tense. It was different than anything I'd ever done before, but I made some connections with what I saw... It was kinda one of those things where you have to be there to understand.

The poems I read are all around somewhere... Red, Red Rose is on this blog, and so Everlasting Night is on my Eighth Grade Project Blog. Slipping Silk was in the April 14th issue of the Everett Herald, in Sarri Gilman's column (I hope I didn't spell her name wrong...). Rediscovered Memories was in the February 4th issue of the South Whidbey Record. I read Nightmares On Fire at a Poetry Slam... Unfortuneately, I forgot which one. The next one is April 30, by the way. It's at Langley Library at 7 P.M.

Yep... So my weekend was very... Active. After Brave New Words (10 A.M. to 5 P.M.), my mom and I left to go to my grandma's eightieth birthday party (6 P.M. to 9 P.M.). I was so tired by the time we finished... Plus, I ate too much at Grandma's party. On Sunday I planted corn, cucumber, zucchini, pea, bean, and sunflower seeds in pots for our garden. I'm not complaining or anything - I actually had a lot of fun. Maybe too much - I'm feeling sleep deprived.

I am so going to bed now.

Bye!

~Cassie