Writers for Readers is a collaborative partnership between Literacy KC and UMKC’s Creative Writing Program. This innovative program employs a creative writing graduate student to create, implement, and teach writing to teens and adults enrolled in Literacy KC classes. Writers for Readers gives our students the opportunity to express themselves in new, exciting, and more imaginative ways all while improving basic reading and writing skills.
As we prepare to welcome a new Writers for Readers Fellow to our team we look back with much gratitude at the year that John Moessner, (2017-2018) Writers for Readers Fellow spent with us. John not only brought an expertise in creative writing and a heart for our mission, he is also hugely talented and you can read his work in American Chordata and Plainsongs. We are forever grateful for the year he spent with us and will miss his humor and commitment to our students. Below is his reflection on the year he spent in the Literacy KC classroom.
Teaching creative writing means a lot of trial and error. It means finding examples and prompts that are accessible but also stretch students to think about life from a new perspective. One student remarked when I came to class that it was time to stretch the brain. Even if the assignment was not fully grasped, that student still thought it was useful to exercise the creative muscle. That muscle needs to be stretched, and stressed, and practiced. It was my job to give the students of Literacy KC that opportunity.
Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “In Praise of Dreams” was one of the examples I used in class to inspire students. Her poem speaks to the multitude of dreams we have as humans, both silly and hopeful. The poem is at points heartbreaking, and at others strange and confusing. One line reads, “I fly the way we ought to, / i.e., on my own,” while the last couplet ends with what the speaker saw in a recent dream, “And the night before last a penguin, / clear as day.” This dance between emotions is hard to exercise at first, but once students caught on they created wonderful pieces. One such piece, “In my dreams” by a student named Geraldine, speaks to the opposites we often feel in life:
“I dream of people I’ve never met. They are in the park in some bushes dead, not alive. In my dreams, I see God in heaven a bright place in front of me. In my dreams, I see Hell a dark scary place in my dreams. I wake up in a fun and happy place. My Bed. Now, in reality, what does it mean, in my dream? In my dream. I see me praising God in my Dream. Amen.”
Writing is a muscle, and there is no greater satisfaction than to see it in use. The poems and stories I read from students often made my eyes well up. I was able to experience many different lives throughout the short span of nine months that I worked as the Writers for Readers Fellow, and it was through writing that I was able to do that. Humans are made up of more than labels affixed to them by society, and the opportunity to be creative allows us to expand, and become a multitude of things.
If I had to sum up my time at Literacy KC I would say this: buy an anthology, read our students’ words, and experience beautiful lives.