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Not so long ago, Maggie Hess was a student at Roosevelt High School where she fell under poetry’s spell thanks to her WITS writer-in-residence, Cassie Sparkman. Fast forward five years and here she is, a recent graduate of the University of Washington with a degree in English and Creative Writing and an intern for the very program that started her on her path. In the following interview, she talks with Karen Finneyfrock, WITS writer-in-residence at Nathan Hale High School and Summit K-12. MH: Slam is so clearly an important part of your life, and certainly your poetry life. How do you think your focus on performance has changed your ideas about writing and teaching poetry? KF: Yes. […] Performance poetry—the idea behind slam, specifically—is that it’s a populist art form, so it’s intended to be for everyone, regardless of their academic understanding of poetry. I find that to be incredibly helpful for talking to just an average group of high school students. It’s not that different from a cross-section of people you might read to at a slam. And because it’s specifically geared toward engaging everyone—I like to make the analogy to Shakespeare, because in Shakespeare’s day, everyone went to see plays…he really knew how to play to all of his audiences—he would have high-brow jokes and low-brow jokes, and I think that slam does the same thing, so it’s really helpful in a high school class to start each class by showing a piece of spoken art. Different pieces engage different students, but to a pretty surprising level, it engages almost all of the students. MH: Do you find that you use your performance experience to perform as a teacher in front of the classroom? KF: I often think that as a teacher a big part of my job is keeping the students entertained, keeping them engaged enough that they want to listen, they want to learn. And a lot of times, if a kid’s attention is wandering, I blame myself. What can I do to draw their attention back to me? Dynamics of voice, and appearance. How often do you teach quietly, and then when do you get loud, and when do you walk around the room waving your arms? MH: When I was a student with WITS at Roosevelt High School, and at Eckstein Middle School as well, part of what really drew my attention to poetry was that having a WITS teacher was the first time I heard poetry read out loud well. And that completely changed my experience of poetry. You said you use spoken word poems to draw in attention, and you seemed to think that might be more effective than reading a poem that was meant for the page, off the page, or just asking them to read silently. Do you think it’s just the drama that draws their attention? KF: I do think the drama is part of it; I think that’s well said. You know, spoken word is the earliest form of poetry we know. Spoken word is really where poetry came from. Before we had the written word, we had the spoken word. So at the risk of sounding overly dramatic myself, I tend to think it’s something sort of primal about human beings. I recently read a quote by another author that was talking about the basic human love for storytelling. He said, if you stand in an elevator, and you start off “Once upon a time,” everyone will listen to what you’re saying. I really think that’s true. I think that people love a good story. I love a good story so much. Had I had a WITS program when I was in school, I would have relished the opportunity to just put away the textbooks and sit and listen. So I think it is the drama, and I think it is almost something deeper than that. Kids are so hungry to learn from us, and for me to be getting up and really relating a personal experience to them—I can’t say it’s more powerful than having them read it, but it is a very direct and human experience that I think is appreciated. MH: Do you have one poem that you just love to use in the classroom? KF: Oh, I do. I have so many. From my own work, I have a poem called “The Newer Colossus,” which is a retelling of the poem, “The New Colossus,” by M. L. Lazarus, which is the famous poem about the Statue of Liberty that was carved onto the statue, that contains the lines, “Give me your tired, your poor…” I did a rewriting of that in order to address issues of immigration today. It’s a persona poem, in which I actually take on the voice of the Statue of Liberty. I like to do that one for kids because I think that they’re learning about the original poem in school, and they’re learning about immigration in schools, so it’s a great opportunity to sort of fast-forward to right now, and what can art say that is relevant today about these issues. MH: To prove that poetry is still… KF: Thriving. MH: One of the things you try to teach is how to read one line of poetry well. And you do teach students how to perform their own poems or how to read other people’s poems out loud in the classroom. I’m wondering how you do that, and how students react to it. KF: To be honest, we usually only get to the basics of it…how to be slow enough, how to be loud enough, and how to articulate each word. […] But, I do think that in those spaces, it’s transformative for these kids, and amazing. I try to subtly hint at the more important things that I’m teaching them when I’m teaching them performance. For example, a lot of the girls are quieter in class than the boys are, and when they get up to speak, their voices are softer. What I always say is this is “some of us are just naturally gifted, have been born with these nice loud voices, and some of us have not. And those of us who have not, have got to work harder to be heard, and it is critical that you learn that now: how important it is to be heard. Especially girls. You need to make sure that your voice is heard.” I hope that that has some positive impact on them. MH: You’ve been in a lot of classrooms, with a lot of different organizations…do you have a favorite teaching story, that you just love to tell, or a teaching moment? KF: It’s something that’s happening right now…there’s this girl in one of my classes who is Special Ed. She has never, to my knowledge, from what her teachers say, excelled in any of her classes. It’s always a struggle. She is the best poet, in any of my five classes. The things she comes up with—I can’t believe them. They are gorgeous. They are almost heartbreaking. I feel like I’m choked up right now. It just makes me so unbelievably happy, that there is something she can be better at. And I see her just blossoming in poetry class, to know that there’s something she’s that good at. She’s just a natural, it’s incredible. MH: You’ve worked with a lot of different organizations. Is there something different, or especially appealing, or well-structured, about Writers in the Schools? KF: Absolutely…WITS is such an amazing program. One of the amazing things, which is extremely nuts and bolts, is that WITS gives us a regular paycheck every month. I know that with my check from WITS, my rent will be paid every month, I will have groceries and eat, and that’s just an amazing gift to all of the writers in the program. It’s really wonderfully structured to take good care of the writers. And I owe so much to WITS in that way. It’s that stability, the fact that I don’t have to be scrambling and worrying from month to month, that allows me, on a day when I’m not teaching, to work on my next book of poetry, and not bite my nails trying to exist as an artist. And WITS has given me a huge education in poetry by giving me free tickets to the entire Poetry & Lecture Series. I’ve seen poets just in the last year who have hugely changed my writing—poets as well as fiction writers and lecturers—who have hugely affected my work. MH: So, the great question, why do you teach? Beyond, I guess, the support it gives you to be an artist? KF: I didn’t know I would love it when I started. I do love it, I absolutely love it. I love the kids I work with. My faith in people is renewed again and again, and challenged, and renewed again by teaching. I have kids in my classes who are refugees from war-torn countries, I have kids whose families are homeless and come to school every day and work harder than anyone, I have kids who are autistic, I have kids who are special ed. I have such a wide, wide range of kids going through domestic abuse situations, or parents who are in jail…the list just drags on and on of difficult, difficult circumstances that these kids are in. I care about them really deeply. I care about giving them an opportunity to just tell their own stories. And it’s one of my really fundamental beliefs about people is that we need to be able to tell our own stories. That by telling our stories to each other for whatever reason, through whatever mechanism, it allows us to release some of that pain we’re holding onto, some of that fear that we’re all alone, that no one else understands us. I had fine schools growing up, but I never had that sort of opportunity. I would go home and write little stories by myself in my room but I never had the opportunity to do that in school so I never really got to share them with people. I love the opportunity to give kids the space to do that, and that I can be there supporting them through it feels like an amazing gift to me. MH: Can you think of something you wish I’d asked? KF: I would like to say a couple more things about the influence that I see writing having on the kids that I teach: a lot of them, I think, were never told that their stories are important. Or maybe never told that what they have to say or what they think about themselves or the world was really a valid thing to share with everyone. And for some of them, this is the first time they’ve heard that. In a lot of ways, I see them emerging from these little shells. The great thing about getting kids early—I’m teaching a lot of middle schoolers right now—the great thing about getting them early is they’re still willing. They haven’t gone into such a deep place of hiding and embarrassment and fear about their own creativity. They’re still willing to be playful with it and share it. It’s been actually remarkably easy for me this semester to get kids to jump up and read their work in front of each other. […] I always tell them, public speaking is the number one fear among adults. More than sharks or cancer. It just seems so crazy to me. So if we can help them early get over that basic fear—wow, they are going to be so wildly successful…People who can write well and speak well excel in the workforce no matter what job they’re in. So let’s give them that. Let’s give them a leg up on everything. MH: It seems like the reluctance in middle school and high school to read out loud has a lot do with a fear of each other—of what somebody’s going to think or say about you—which is a valid thing in middle and high school, which involves a lot of judgment, and cliques, and peer pressure. So if you can get kids to not be scared of speaking in front of each other, part of what you’re seeing is them not being afraid of each other. That seems exciting. KF: It’s so true. At the end of last semester…one girl got up and read her piece, which I think was maybe about being beaten up on the playground or something like that. She started crying during it, and I’m crying during it—it’s such a really painfully emotional moment to happen in the classroom. And I’m so proud of her, and I made a big deal talking about how brave she was, how touched I was. It was a stunning day in class. Other kids felt so comfortable talking about their emotional stuff once one person talked about it. It was really interesting. Beautiful. For more information about WITS, please contact Elizabeth Ames Staudt, Program Manager, at 206-621-2230 x13 or elizabeth@lectures.org. Frequently
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