Poet Olga Garcia, author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas and the chapbook Lovely Little Creatures, blogs about her experience facilitating the P&W-supported workshop at Robidoux Library in Riverside, California, during May 2011.

Anton Chekhov wrote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” I often use Esmeralda Santiago’s “How to Eat a Guava” to illustrate Chekhov’s point. In addition, I lay out an altar of fruits, vegetables, and sensory objects—there’s labor in carting around pineapples, baby watermelons, and football-sized conch shells, but for me the altar is ritual, the first thing I put up and the last thing I take down. Nowhere has the altar proven more effective than it did at Robidoux Library in Riverside, California.

Imagine a stampede of thirty teenagers who gravitate towards the altar, handling radishes and jalapeños, asking “Are we gonna eat these?” One spiky-haired kid quickly falls in love with a coconut. “Can I have this? Please!? Please!?”  Others follow his lead. Luckily, I’m not the only adult in the room. Arlene Cano, coordinator of the Jurupa Reads program, two English teachers from nearby schools, and the library’s youth coordinator are also present. Together, we manage to get everyone seated.

We begin with a listening game. I read “How to Eat a Guava” as they jot down phrases from the text that trigger their senses. When I ask for volunteers to share, they respond with a manic show of hands. “Dark green guava,” says one student. “The size of a tennis ball” and “prickly stem end,” adds another. “It smells like summer afternoons and hopscotch under a mango tree.”

Next, they’re invited to visit the altar and choose an object for our first writing exercise. They swarm the table. The spiky-haired kid clutches the coconut. I encourage them to smell and taste some of the items. They cringe and say “Ugh!” at the small bag of salted dried fish. I give them chia to taste. When the tiny, flavorless seeds magically gel on their tongues, they describe the texture as slimy, soft, Jello-y. One student grimaces. “Gross!” She rushes to spit the seeds into the trash.

The writing exercises feel chaotic because they’re fidgeting in their seats, calling out, “Me! Me! Can you help me?” But when they share aloud... poetry comes alive. The coconut transforms into a brown, hairy sun in an alien world. A seashell triggers the memory of a day at the beach with a now-deceased father. A waxy green poblano sizzles on a mother’s stove.

At the end of the workshop, they beg to keep the altar items. “Please! ¡Por favor!” I say yes to the edibles. Coconut kid beams. Others seize the pineapple, bananas, even the dry hibiscus flowers, and the cinnamon sticks. When they finally disperse, I’m spent yet completely satisfied. On the table, they leave behind scattered shells and stones—skeletal remains of an altar well feasted on.

Photo: Olga Garcia. Credit: Weenobee.com.

Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Make a list of the names of your family members and friends. Use all of them to create a poem. Try writing a tiny letter to each name, using free association to link each name with another word, or describing each briefly as if it were a character or object.

The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards were announced yesterday, recognizing noteworthy Australian novels and the "efforts and sacrifices" of their writers.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard presented the award for fiction to New Zealand native Stephen Daisley, whose debut novel, Traitor, was released last year by Text Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Australia.

Daisley, who now lives in Perth, Australia, received eighty thousand Australian dollars (roughly eighty-six thousand U.S. dollars), an award which the fifty-six-year-old author says will help his family "survive a bit more." The author, who worked without publication for twenty years, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he persevered with his work because writing is his "bliss."

The shortlisted novelists were each awarded five thousand Australian dollars (about five thousand four hundred U.S. dollars). They are Roberta Lowing for Notorious (Allen & Unwin), Roger McDonald for When Colts Ran (Random House), David Musgrave for Glissando: A Melodrama (Sleepers Publishing), and Kim Scott for That Deadman Dance (Macmillan).

Since 2010, P&W-supported poet and spoken word artist Clara Nura Sala has been conducting poetry workshops with veterans. We asked Clara to describe the experience.

Sponsored by Elders Share the Arts, I'm teaching a poetry workshop for veterans at the Veteran's Hospital on 23rd Street in Manhattan. Participants come from across New York City, from Staten Island to the Upper West Side. The veterans vary in age, but the majority are between the ages of fifty-five and seventy—having served in the Korean, Vietnam, and/or Gulf Wars. The participants seldom bring up their war experiences directly. However, it does come up organically in the context of their poems.

I like to push them to the edge of discovery, emotionally and creatively. These amazingly talented group of men respond with original, moving, and very well-crafted poems. I've introduced stream-of-consciousness and improvisational writing exercises. I've also introduced contemporary poets, such as Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, and e.e. cummings. We share our poems aloud, and offer praise and constructive criticism. I say "we" because I consider myself part of the class, not just the facilitator. I write along with the class. I am in the experience with them, and they inspire me to write wonderful and spontaneous poems.

Some participants have expressed that the workshop has become therapeutic. I take this as a high compliment to the workshop's structure, which allows for both maximum creative expression and intimately personal discussions. These men have been greatly affected by their experience with war (most of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and a couple have schizophrenia). The group is so loving, caring, and kind and extremely supportive of each other. I am honored to know them, to share their lives, their art, and their vulnerability.

Photo: Clara Nura Sala and workshop participants.  Photo Credit: Gregory Hicks.

Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.

The German Haus der Kulturen der Welt has awarded its twenty-five-thousand-euro (roughly thirty-five-thousand-dollar) International Literature Award to Russian writer Mikhail Schischkin for his novel Venushaar (Maiden's Hair). The novel, which has won several awards in Russia but took seven years to make its way into translation in Germany—and remains untranslated in the United States—was selected for the prize from among over one hundred books translated from twenty-four languages and originating in fifty countries.

Among the finalists for the prize, which honors translations of books from any language into German, were Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat for the translation of her memoir Brother, I'm Dying, which was published by Knopf in the United States in 2007; Elias Khoury for Yalo, originally written in Arabic and released in English by Archipelago Books in 2008; and Mathias Énard for Zone, translated from the French and published last December in English by Open Letter. A list of all the finalists and their German publishers is available on the prize website.

The jury, comprised of editors, translators, critics, and authors, called Schischkin a "wordsmith of the highest order" who has "developed a unique form of novel" and "plays with
perspectives and settings, with the most diverse verbal registers and stylistic positions." His translator, Andreas Tretner of Berlin, who has been translating works from the Russian, Czech, and Bulgarian since the mid-eighties, was also praised for "finding a German lid for every Russian pot."