An update from our fifty-third Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett

A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, January 28, plus some of the output published below

This week, we discussed images. Images are a fundamental building block of writing, but what are they? An image is tangible and visible, something physical that we can see. To begin the lesson, we looked at several paintings, including The Scream by Edvard Munch. We noticed how feelings could be evoked by the artist using only images; The Scream evokes a sense of horror through its depiction of a man screaming on a bridge. Next, we read a few poems composed solely of concrete images, including “In the Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound and two poems by William Carlos Williams. We discussed the feelings and ideas that these poems managed to evoke in each of us through imagery alone. The lesson: write poetry without explanation, use only images, allow the reader to derive their own meaning. 

The Challenge: Write a poem or story using only images—no explanation, no exposition, minimal adjectives.

The Participants: Samarina, Genevieve, Emma, Jacey, Eric, Lucy, Katelyn, Aarush, Stella, Amaya, Yueling, Catherine, Ava, Alice, Aislyn, Lindsay, Seva, Lina, Aurelia

If Only it Wasn’t Me

Amaya Chugani, 9

Watching that girl drop
holding that breathless baby in her warm hands
Sitting on the street
my palms wishing to brush her shoulder

The rain
Dripping
on her ragged clothes
Her hair keeping the limp baby warm, hoping
Her tears raining on the baby
sitting in front of the big stone building
if only I could invite her in

Her holding the breathless baby in her scared hands