Spring 2013 Issue: Volume 44, Number 3

We asked the contributors to Writing Through Trauma, a special section in the Spring 2013 issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine (44/3) the following two questions:

1. Aside from the poems and stories mentioned in the pieces you contributed, are there any other poems, stories, songs, music, essays, etc. that you bring to your work with those who have suffered traumas in their lives?   What is it about these particular pieces that you find helpful?

2. Clearly, working with those who have experienced trauma brings its own special challenges. The experiences we are asking these students to write about can be fraught and difficult.   In a few sentences, can you tell us what advice you would share with your fellow writers in the schools who are doing such work for the first time?

Their answers, below, are full of smart ideas, reflections, advice, and a wide range of poems to use in working with students who are writing about trauma.  

--Susan Karwoska, editor

 

David Surface

1) There are two stories that seem to provide veterans with a model for how to write about traumatic experiences. One is 'Indian Camp' by Ernest Hemingway, and the other is 'The Wedding' by Colette. Two very different stories (and writers), no doubt, but with some important commonalities.

Neither story is about war. There is no violence (no combat, at least) in either story. While the Hemingway story does offer some blood (and a glimpse of a dead body), the violent act takes place offstage, and in the Colette story the sight that "traumatizes" the little girl is an empty marriage bed. What both stories share is a strong sense of a character's sense of self being threatened or altered by an experience that is radically new and foreign to them. In Hemingway's and Colette's stories, it's not the experience itself, but the characters' struggle to process that experience that matters most, as well as the desire to reclaim or protect that lost or threatened sense of self. That is something that veterans with trauma can identify with.

The veterans in the workshop also respond very favorably to the style of both stories, particularly to the economy and richness of physical detail. Neither 'Indian Camp' or 'The Wedding' contain much self-reflection or emotional confession---more importantly, they do not rely on those things in order to be both real and honest. That can be very freeing to a veteran who may have been through traditional therapies in which they've been encouraged to "talk about their feelings."  By focusing on the craft of writing instead of the mechanics of therapy, veterans with trauma may find that they actually get to the heart  of their story much more quickly.

2) I think it's important to first understand who you are---are you a therapist, or are you a teacher of writing? If you are a teacher of writing (as I am), then never forget that as much as you may learn about psychotherapy and recovery, your core strength is your skill as a teacher of writing; everything else comes from that.

Next, you should consider this possibility---that writing can have enormous therapeutic value for a person suffering from trauma even when they are not writing about their trauma. That can be hard to see In a culture fascinated with "cathartic breakthroughs", but it's true. So don't be in a hurry. Don't push. Be patient. Just as people suffering from the effects of trauma need to understand that they are more than their trauma, they also need to know that writing, for them, can be more than just writing about trauma. That way, it will be something they will want to return to later, something that can play an important role not only in their suffering but in their happiness as well.

 

Peter Markus

1) The poet Sean Thomas Dougherty is one of our great poets of loss and reclamation out there in the world. I carry his many books with me into most every teaching situation I find myself in and I find myself in his words as I hope my students too will find themselves in the poetry of others. Dougherty writes, in his poem "A Prayer" from his book The Body's Precarious Balance, "I wanted to sing her a prayer,/ a prayer no human has written,/ to scrawl the notes in the air—/ like the dissonant chorus/ of Canadian geese that paused/ last night, as if frozen/ before the full-moon, throats/ opened, honking out against/ all sorrow, all regrets." I carry those words with me, into the classroom. I carry those words with me, simply, and always, to hold them up against the sorrows and the regrets of the world. Turn open to most any poem by Dougherty in most any of his many books (seek them out right now if you don't have them by your elbow already) and you will find lines like these: "What the dead most miss is to be seen." Language is the lens through which the dead remain with us. Poetry and Dougherty teach us this. As does Gregory Orr's great poem "A Litany," which this too I frequently use with older students, a seemingly simple "I remember" poem that takes on the power and redemptive elements of prayer by any other name. 

2) As for advice to other teaching artists when talking about and getting students to talk about the trauma of loss: Listen. Let the students speak. Speak yourself when it is time to give back with words. Let them know that no one is exempt from loss. It's what makes us human. "When we weep/ we are most alive." So says once more Sean Thomas Dougherty in "Arias," his great anthemic poem about the death of Pavarotti. "What remains is why we live." Or to borrow lastly from Jack Gilbert: "There must be music despite everything." For this poetry matters and can help us make sense of it all. 

 

Autumn Hayes

1)  I like to pull activities and prompts directly from the healing community; for example, the "100 Things That Make Me Happy" list I do to prepare students to write wishes comes from a personal development blog called Happy Black Woman. I also teach lessons based on meditations, therapy exercises, and activities from self-help books. Do I package the lessons as such? Usually, no. Inevitably, the students think they are just brainstorming, writing a poem about eating a vegetable, or profiling their future selves. But in the process, they are also remembering and claiming all the things that make them happy, slowing down to find wonder and joy in unexpected places, or expressing hope for their futures. I think these kinds of prompts stimulate the healing process without being overbearing and invite writers and readers to live again. I definitely find that these pieces--even the simple lists--are the ones my students love the most and push to publish.

2) Sharing time is a great privilege for you, the teaching artist, to hear how your students feel and what they've experienced. It takes a tremendous amount of trust and courage to expose one's lowest or most terrifying moments. Respect the fact that no student should be forced to grant this privilege, fake this trust, or rush this courage, and you will go a long way toward earning it.

Along the same lines, model openness before expecting it. Bring in texts or speakers that dare to be vulnerable and address real issues, or create your own. Whatever we can do to let students know they are not alone--that it is okay to feel again and speak about the seemingly unspeakable--is what we do to encourage them to open up, to write and explore and take back their power against all the pressures to be silent, ashamed, or afraid.

 

Marcia Chamberlain

1) The children I work with respond to many different prompts, and they show me again and again that a poem about black-eyed peas can open the floodgates of feeling and healing as effectively as a poem specifically about sorrow. So, I always focus on connection more than content and allow the rest to follow.  Sometimes, children choose to write head-on about what’s happened to them, but many children feel safer approaching trauma through a side window or a small crack. One poem that resonates with many children is Abdellatif Laabi’s “One Hand Isn’t Enough to Write With.”  Laabi survived many years locked up in a Moroccan prison by writing poetry. This poem, written in French and translated to English, works well both for children who want to speak directly about their experiences as well as those who are still struggling to face what’s happened or are dealing with multiple losses.  The poem begins: “One hand isn’t enough to write with/ these days/ it takes two/ and the second needs to quickly grasp/ the craft of the unspeakable.”  I love how the poem hands us the courage to say what it is hidden and forbidden and unthinkable. The narrator understands that during difficult times, we need an extra hand to push us to find that “unbreakable thread” that will carry us onward. The poem promises that our hands can “embroider the name of a star/ that will rise after the next apocalypse.”  I always return to this poem during times of loss because it reminds my hands that they have important work to do.  During times of “apocalypse,” we need pencils in every hand because when poets write the “unspeakable,” they give birth to the stars.

2) Human connection is what heals, so I look for ways, large and small, to create ties.  For example, I work in a hospital that serves patients from 50 different countries, and many of the children speak languages I don’t know. When I met Alim, we couldn’t talk to one another, but we did share a moment of connection when I gave him a poem written in Arabic, and his eyes lit up. I carry poems in Hindi, Spanish, Mandarin, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Polish, and Tamil.  Forming bonds with children is the beginning of healing.

 

Ibi Zoboi

1) I think I tend to overuse Nikki Giovanni's "Ego Tripping". What I've realized over the years is that trauma for children isn't always this big thing that happens on the news and we experience this trauma collectively. There are small tragedies happening every day in our classrooms--most are not very obvious at all.  When working with underserved students in struggling schools, there's no telling what obstacles they're overcoming on a daily basis.  I like to use what I call "superempowering" poems and Giovanni's "Ego Tripping" is exactly that--a hyperbole.  There are big action verbs and larger-than-life metaphors. I'd want them to see their world and challenges as something to be overcome, something to be conquered, and by giving them these literary tools, it places this power in their hands--at least for the poem they're writing.

2) I think it's best not to approach trauma head on.  It's a delicate dance that we do with our students. We're careful not to turn the music on too loud for fear that they may turn away and not come back.  Free-writes are excellent for opening up communication, but sharing should be optional.  I like to start with list poems. Oftentimes, a list of poweful, evocative words suffices.  Metaphors and similes can be medicine, too.    

 

Merna Hecht

1) Like all poets who work with children who are grieving losses or dealing with trauma, I collect poems that speak to the heart’s deepest sorrows, and to the places where hope and solace can be found. I’ve found some of my favorites for working with young children who have lost loved ones in Francisco Alacron’s vibrantly illustrated bi-lingual Spanish/English poetry collections. I appreciate Alacron’s poems for the way that they encourage children in the youngest age groups to lovingly remember those they have lost as in this excerpt from “My Grandma is an Angel,” found in Angels Ride Bikes and Other

my grandma
wore moons
on her dress

Mexico’s mountains
deserts
ocean

in her eyes
her braids
her voice

I’d see them
touch them
smell them

one day
I was told
“she went far away”

but still
I feel her
next to me.

Fall Poems. 
Also with young children, I’ve often used two poems from Joyce Thomas’s Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea. Her poem “Hide Me in the Cradle of Your Love” gives children an opportunity to write about their own safe “hiding places,” the poem reads in part, 

Oh hide me in the crevice of a rock
Some safe place
Hide me in the cradle
Of your love
In the nook of your warmest
glance

And Thomas’s poem “Cherish Me,” excerpted here is useful for encouraging children to create images of feeling cherished, which I think is as important as providing space to write directly about death, loss or trauma.

I sprang up from mother earth
     She clothed me in her own colors
I was nourished by father sun
     He glazed the pottery of my skin
I am beautiful by design

        I am always on the lookout for poems that pay the closest possible attention to the tenderness and vulnerability of loss and to its inevitability in each of our lives. One of those poems is Lisa Suhair Majaj’s poem “I Remember My Father’s Hands,” from Naomi Shihab Nye’s The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East. With beautiful economy of language, a life story of love and loss is told. It reads in part, 

I Remember My Father’s Hands (excerpt)

because they ripped bread with a quiet purpose,
dipped in fresh green oil like a birthright

because after his mother’s funeral they raised a teacup,
set it down untouched, uncontrollably trembling

because once when I was a child they cupped my face,
dry and warm, flesh full and calloused, for a long moment

because over his wife’s still form they faltered,
great mute helpless beasts

because when his own lungs filled and sank, they reached out
for the first time, pleading

because when I look at my hands
his own speak back

Often I read Yehuda Amichai’s poem “My Father,” before reading Majaj’s poem.  I found it in VOICES: Poetry and Art from Around the World, selected by Barbara Brenner. Its simplicity of love and loss along with the imagery of a father’s hands has given students a way to think about loved ones who have died, keeping the work of their hands and the love that poured forth from them alive in memory and image. 

The memory of my father is wrapped in white paper
like slices of bread of a day’s work.

Like a magician who pulls rabbits and towers from his hat,
he pulled from his small body—love.

The rivers of his hands
poured into his good deeds.

We all have poems that travel with us when we work with young people facing profound losses. One of my most consistent “traveling companions” is Denise Levertov’s poem, “Talking to Grief.” (from Life in the Forest). Whenever I use this poem I find that it provides a straightforward way to personify grief and speak directly to it so that students can begin to articulate what they most wish to say about their loss or trauma.

 

Talking to Grief (excerpt)

Oh grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

When he read the Levertov poem, Marwan Abdulrahim, a student from Iraq who had experienced a great deal of violence and loss created his own “Talking to Grief” piece, writing in part,

Oh Grief, I should not let you go into every Iraqi house,
like a wandering dog trying to find his way home.

Oh Grief, I should put you in the desert, and keep you from entering
the houses of my people…

2)  The word of advice that comes to heart and mind is “trust.” Trust the absolute importance of the need to speak about sorrow. Trust that we do not want any child or teen to feel “odd” or “different” or “uneasy” because they are coming to school with the burden of grief untold. Trust that safe space in which poems can be heard and internalized in a student’s own private way will provide authentic invitations for “talking to grief.” Trust that a young person’s inner life is complex and able to hold both sides of what it means to lose-the stunning absence of what or who has been lost and the possibility for finding wholeness inside of what is broken. Trust that poems have always spoken to what wounds us and what blesses us and take time to provide the space for both. Pick up Naomi Shihab Nye’s collection What Have You Lost, or Kevin Young’s collection The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing and find the poems you love, that resonate with you and bring those to your classroom. Share your vulnerability as is age and school appropriate—read your own poems about loss or painful or traumatic experiences and invite the teacher to do the same, so that the classroom shifts into a communal space for listening to and telling the heart’s truths. And, as said by the other poets, bring poems with you that provide reflective surfaces for every child—bilingual when possible—poems in which a young person can find references to their own identity, ethnicity and culture. Keep in mind that to do this work we are connecting on a deep level to the ways in which relationships and memories sustain us and that though the losses may seem unspeakably painful, mining for self regard, joy, hope and a sense of the celebratory is just as important as bringing words to sorrow. Trust that we can help young people embrace their own experiences of loss and of survival and courage when they hear the stories and poems that their classmates share.