Day 5: Poetry workshop is filled with smiles and...tears.

Throughout the five days of aTi, our group shared drafts and revisions of writing pieces. Day five, however, truly showed me how you could have six writers in a room (Laurie, Seema, Svea, Susan, our faciliator Cat, and me) and have completely varied working methods, editing styles, and subject matter of pieces. Seema would always begin her drafts by hand writing them; Laurie did too. Svea had a journal that she filled for pages and pages with freewrites. She then would take those freewrites and draft them into poems. Susan handwrote, but she also typed on her Ipad. I would drift from hand writing pieces to typing them, but I'd always be listening to music on my headphones. We wrote many drafts and did several revisions during the week, but the following are some of the most memorable pieces (to me).

***Seema's ode to her loom
***Seema's poem about making noodle kugel for her husband
***Laurie's poem about Tinkerbell's divorce
***Laurie's poem about Meatball City
***Susan's poem about the various weights we carry in life
***Susan's poem about "the word"
***Svea's poem about the backyard of a house
***Svea's poem about yellow jackets, her sons, and an eerie dream

During these five days, we got to know each other well. When I last attended aTi for poetry (summer of 2012), there were moments when members of our poetry workshop cried. When most people write poetry, they're not writing about flowers, rainbows, and horses. They write about experiences, and many times those are experiences are painful. Last year when I attended aTi for pottery, I remember making the joke of "No one ever cries in pottery workshop."

Well, my tears appeared on this last day of aTi. Like I previously said, when it comes to sharing emotions, I tend to hold back. On day five, I shared an older piece with the group, a poem entitled "Presence." This poem is representative of the types of pieces that I would like to write all of the time. Poetry is challenging though; it takes a lot out of you.