SOME STORIES ARE BETTER WHEN IN A PICTURE...

JOHNNY MACRAE'S POETRY WORKSHOP

By Betty Bennett

On January 22, Rita Grimaldi and I joined a workshop at The Spill, sponsored by the Peterborough Youth Poetry Experience, featuring Johnny MacRae, a spoken word artist from BC. 

Johnny does a lot of work in BC high schools. His energy and manner invite a warm rapport with young or older workshop participants, and bridge the gap between what may be perceived as “old, boring” poetry and hip, youthful spoken word.

 

Johnny opened his workshop with a discussion about how he uses objects as a device to describe feelings that might otherwise be difficult to express or to hear.  The vase, the coat, the old boots become the narrator, creating a slightly easier distance between the poet/ the listener and the emotion.

He then led us through a set of exercises or play to loosen us up physically, release inhibitions or stress and make us more conscious observers of the other workshop participants. The warm-up was vocalizing a non-verbal sound accompanied by a physical gesture, small or exaggerated, and passing it around the circle.  

We moved on to “zooming”.  Making eye contact and “zooming” an imaginary ball across a circle to someone you don’t know. When another group is holding a meeting nearby in the same space, it certainly deals with any shyness you might feel about looking silly. 

The final part of the workshop was a partnered exercise in which we each described an object precious or special to us after gazing steadily into our partners eyes for a full minute.  Not easy to do, whether with someone you know or a stranger.  The eyes, it is said, are the windows of the soul, and this alone is a challenging piece of performance art.  

After we described our object, our partner took ten minutes to write their impressions of our object from our description of it.  

At the end of the exercise, we had the option of sharing our written piece with the group.  The impressions ranged from brief, evocative meditations to fully realized poems. 

It was an engaging workshop, led by a supportive, encouraging and generous artist.  Using an object as narrator is an idea that, I think, would lend itself not only to poetry, but to developing a different point of view for traditional or personal storytelling.

WRITING STORY AND POETRY

BY RITA GRIMALDI

The first poetry workshop teacher I encountered was Johnny MacRae.

He said that his kind of poetry was based on communicating emotion; that this emotion entered the audience so that the poem lodged in their own needs and in their own experiences.

After the workshop I wrote a poem that was all feeling.

The second poetry workshop teacher I encountered just gave what the poets call a word prompt. Her word was 'basement'.

Then my storyteller side came out.

She said, “Remember the time that there was a rat in the basement.”

I began to write the story of the rat in the basement.

Some how the story had music skating around its edges. This music made it poetry.

The words of Johnny MacRae were still with me.

The words that said that emotion was the driving energy of poetry.

So my heart began to beat for rat

I felt for rat

I had sympathy for rat

My hands wrote rat’s epilogue.

Here is Rat’s Poem.

The Basement                                                                                            

I am a small girl

I go down into our basement kitchen

A rat appears

Everyone is screaming

I have come down to have my mother check my reading

Everything stops.

The men, my father and his brothers get brooms

They begin to chase the rat

To hit the rat

To smash the rat

To clobber the rat

To defeat the rat

To massacre the rat

Finally it is dead

My father picks it up by the tail

Holding it by the tail, he carries it into the furnace room

The door to the coal-burning furnace has a small circle for a window

I see the flame

My father opens the door

A great rectangle of flames appears

The rat is thrown in

The rat disappears into the flames

The iron door closes.

What did the rat want?

Did it want food?

Did it want love?

Did it want attention?

Why did it risk running out in front of humans?

What was its intention?

As a child I observed what happened

I felt nothing

But now I feel for the rat

How difficult an end to be consumed in the rage of men

And burned to a crisp in a fire.

Postscript

What if storytellers were to speak their stories in poetry?

Then, oh then, they would have a whole other audience for their craft.