Taking Poetic License Seriously

San Francisco Examiner
Wednesday, January 27, 2000

WritersCorps-sponsored poetry slam will allow S.F. youth to show off their talents
By Craig Marine of the Examiner Staff

Twelve-year-old Kenny Washington took a few seconds to sum up the essential problem he shares with other poets through the centuries.”They are really easy to think up,” he said of his ideas, “and really hard to write.”

 Washington, a student at Everett Middle School, is one of scores of young people participating in the San Francisco WritersCorps project, which gives them a place to express their feelings and — almost without their knowing — generally improves their writing, spelling, grammar and other writerly skills. Administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the local WritersCorps will launch the second annual Youth Poetry Slam League competition at 7 p.m. Friday at Borders Books at 400 Post St. Team members from the Mission District YWCA and Log Cabin Ranch will square off and exchange verbiage in the first of four local contests that eventually will propel the winners to New York City for an All Star Slam in May.

Washington will be saving his best licks for the Feb. 19 contest, also at Borders, while Andrea Rodriguez, 20, will read her work in public for the first time Friday.”I’m really nervous about it,” Rodriguez said, “but I don’t think of the competition part. I think it will feel good to read my work to other people, even if I know inside I’ll be shaking a little.”

Rodriguez has been part of the program since last summer, working with WritersCorps teacher Cathy Arellano — who, like her pupil, is a San Francisco native –to put her feelings on paper. The experience has been more than Rodriguez expected.”It’s very spiritual for me in a lot of ways,” she said. “I can take whatever is inside of me and unburden myself, get things outside of myself so I’m not carrying them around with me. I love to just sit there and let the words flow right onto the paper, that’s the best part.”

Arellano encourages her students to trust their writing instincts and ignore whatever self-censorship may be holding them back.”I tell them we’ll worry about the spelling and grammar later,” Arellano said. “For so many of these kids, the very idea of writing makes them freeze up, they get scared to make mistakes, they think they can’t do it. I try to help them see that they can. They are tremendously creative and intelligent people — my job is actually very simple.”

Washington said as much earlier when he was talking about what his involvement in the WritersCorps program has brought him.”I learned that I can write a poem,” he said. “I always thought it was something I didn’t know how to do. It turns out that it was really just something that I hadn’t tried.”

For Rodriguez, who is attending City College as well as working, the writing has given her ideas about the future.”I’ve been thinking it would be nice to write a book about my mother and her sisters,” she said. “It could show through their lives — and they had very different lives, even though they were sisters — what it was like to be a Latin American woman in this country. Maybe before (WritersCorps) I wouldn’t have even thought that was a possibility. Now, at least it is something I can think of.”

The national WritersCorps program has been in existence since 1994, with sites in San Francisco, New York and Washington. Aimed at helping at-risk youth, the program has helped hundreds in San Francisco. Still in its infancy, it figures to help many more, if Kenny Washington’s experience is any indication.”Now, I read poetry books to see how the writers try to do what they do,” he said. “When something comes into my head, I want to write it down right away. I’m having fun, and I can tell I’m learning, too.”