What’s your why?

Welcome. All are welcome to participate in the 5-day Open Write — from one day to all days, depending on your schedule. There are no set rules for the length of a poem, and you are free to modify or reject the prompts as you wish, allowing you to write whatever is on your mind or in your heart. We firmly believe that the best writing instructors are actual writers, and this platform offers a supportive environment for you to nurture your writing journey. Just scroll down to share your poem in the comment section. For more information about the Open Writes click here.

Our Host: Dave Wooley

Dave Wooley is an English, Journalism and Creative Writing teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, where he has taught since 2001. He has served as a Co-Adviser for the school’s hybrid newspaper The Westword since 2003. He is also an adjunct Professor at Fairfield University, teaching Philosophy of Hip Hop, and a teaching fellow at the Connecticut Writing Project. Dave has been involved with the Furious Flower Center for Black Poetry as a participating scholar in its last three Legacy Seminars and he is one of the authors of Furious Flower’s newly created open access syllabus, Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus. He lives in Stratford, Connecticut with his wife and four children.

Inspiration 

January, after the revelry of the new year, seems like a perfect time for reflection. For a reset, perhaps. Or a time for thinking about purpose. Or perhaps, purposely not thinking about purpose!

At NCTE this past November, I went to a panel presentation on the excellent Chicagoland poetry anthology Respect the Mic and I was eager to bring some of those poems to my classroom. One piece from the anthology that really resonates with the idea of reflection and purpose is Leah Kindler’s poem “Why I Write Poetry”. 

After reading the poem, my students and I wrote our own “Why I _______” poems after Leah Kindler’s. My students found it to be a great exercise in reflection and in thinking about their own sense of purpose. For their own poems, I asked them to create at least 10 “Because” statements, modeled after the lines in Kindler’s poem, but I didn’t limit them to any specific number of lines. 

Process

Besides offering an opportunity for self reflection, the “Why I…” poems are a chance to write an “After” poem in the style of Leah Kindler (whose poem is actually written after Major Jackson), and a chance to write in the style of a list poem, while using anaphora as the dominant stylistic element of the piece. 

Feel free to stick to the “Because” statements at the beginning of every line or use a different phrase to begin your lines. 

Alternatively, another choice that embraces the use of anaphora, while still keeping within the framework of reflection is the poem “What You Talking ‘Bout” by Damaris Hill from her book Breath Better Spent. She uses direct address to confront her (younger) narrative persona and begins all of her lines with “you”. The effect is really powerful. Here’s an excerpt from the first stanza:

you scary all the time
you live in a world that don’t never make sense
you haven’t learned the currency of lies
you got honesty scabbed on your lips
you got scars on your face
you got worries, hot and blistered fright
you figure truth must taste like poison

So take this moment to reflect, reset, get deep, or be silly. As always, the choice is yours! 

Dave’s Poem

Why I cook…

Because ordering out is too damn expensive.
Because I tend to treat calorie counts like word counts and
cooking is the editor that I need.
Because the right mix of ingredients is alchemy.
Because nobody knows that cumin is the secret
ingredient in my barbecue chicken.
Because my kids miss my meals when they go,
so I know they’ll always come home.
Because I crave the feeling of making people happy.
Because I got served bland ass food as a kid and
I’m stopping the violence.
Because garlic and onions and peppers and salt dance in
a pan of olive oil and soften to one another in the heat.
Because it’s DJing, but I don’t have to be in the club.
Because it’s like the classroom–I cook there too.
Because every meal is a blank page that needs just the right words.
And because when we share a meal, we share each other.

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.