Last week I attended the Poetry Lab workshop run by visiting author Julayne Lee. Julayne led a fascinating discussion on how society silences children and certain groups of people and how politeness and often even our own families reinforce suppression.
She noted how often we spend years regretting what we didn’t say because we were told not to and feared retribution. She offered us a chance to mitigate that regret with the following prompt: Begin a poem with the line “What I wanted to say was...” That line can be kept as your first line or even your title, or you can use it as a ghostline and erase it after the poem is finished. So for your prompt, spill. We want to know what you’ve kept quiet for too long.
Julayne has a new book out, Not My White Savior. Be sure to check out her website to find out when her next workshops and readings will be.
