I just found out that my workshop proposal has been accepted by 826CHI and scheduled for January 28. The kids will be reading from the work that we create at an event the
Museum of Contemporary Art
on February 21. The workshop we’re doing is called, "Finding You In Stuff: Identity in Found Poetry & Collage". Here’s the summary:
How do we define ourselves? This workshop will use the castoff words of life—receipts, notes from kids in school, snippets from our journals, random lines from textbooks, etc.—to show how identity can be drawn from the stuff around you as well as the thoughts inside you.
Lots of kids are familiar with the concept of pouring out their innermost thoughts onto paper to express themselves. This workshop approaches the concept of expression differently—from the outside in. We’ll see that the text that surrounds can be surprisingly useful in defining who we are in a literary way.
At the end of our class, we’ll have a one-sheet poem on stiff cardboard with a collage on the back showing the original materials from which the poem was constructed.
I am greatly looking forward to it.