Imagine the Possibilities

On Friday at NCTE I attended a workshop titled “Writing Poetry in the Wild” with Heidi Mordhorst, Irene Latham, Margaret Simon, Laura Purdie Salas, and May Lee Hahn. One of the ideas Laura shared was to think about our connections to the world. She encouraged us to look around, especially when we are someplace new, write a poem that shows that place, then make a connection to a feeling or perhaps a memory. She passed out post-it notes and challenged everyone to write a poem at some point during the convention.

On Saturday morning I found myself in a quiet room, waiting for the next session. I opened my notebook and found that post-it. It was the perfect time to write. I started by listing words that came to mind about NCTE – things I saw or heard, feelings I had, what I noticed. I hope this list poem captures the excitement of the first day:

Friday at NCTE

Scurry down the hall

Quick embrace

So good to see you

Can we catch up later?

Treasured friends

New ideas

Listen

Learn

Love

And here’s a haiku for the whole experience:

Opening minds to

Fresh ideas and discourse

React and renew

Thanks to all the authors, friends, speakers, participants, and volunteers who inspired me at NCTE.

Last week I attended the Keystone State Literacy Conference in State College, home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. It’s always fun to return to Happy Valley where I spent four very formative years as an undergraduate. Of course, that was fifty years ago, and much has changed in that time.

One of the optional pre-conference events was a tour of the library. I hadn’t been in the library in…well, probably close to forty-five years, so I jumped at the chance to rediscover this special space.

As we entered I took a minute to orient myself. The massive staircases still framed the front lobby, but the Starbucks tucked in the back was new. The room with the long study tables and card catalogs now housed comfortable chairs and couches arranged in small group spaces. There were more rooms, large and small, more spaces designated for creating, more computers, and on a Sunday afternoon…more students. I think that is what stood out to me the most. There were students everywhere on computers and tablets, working alone and together. The library was a hub of activity!

Near the entrance was a Short Edition short story dispenser. Here you could opt to receive a 1, 3, or 5-minute story at the touch of a button. The stories are written by Penn State students, faculty, and staff and submitted for distribution. The program, started about a year or so ago, is an attempt to encourage more people to spend time reading and writing literature.

I copied this from the PSU Short Edition website: “Together let’s make the world a more poetic place by encouraging reading and writing, while showcasing Penn State authors internationally.”

Sounds good to me! I believe that it is “story” that will bring us to a better understanding of each other and what it means to live in kindness. Wouldn’t it be great to have these dispensers everywhere, like Little Free Libraries? Perhaps it is a movement, I just never saw it before.

And by the way…thank you, Sabrina, for your engaging story “The Model Employee.”