In recognition of the beautiful words that are art all around the world, we celebrate a massive collection of artists and their words, their art, and their poetry. At My Voice Media Center, we celebrate the many voices in collaboration to fight Mental Health Stigma through their words, actions, art and continuous involvement through words in Poetry. Believe it or not, poetry has a special place amongst many artists. They being in fact artists of words, so many artists need words to be artists. Some of My Voice Media Center are Poets and connected to their art in a special way. They not only create the works that one can visualize, but text, put words to and formulate language to mean what they want to say with words. Do the two go hand in hand? I'll leave that up to the artist, of that particular group.
Art and Poetry, even when they don't go hand in hand, adding collaged words to a painting, or adding text to a graphic, the art in creation, a work of art, can be of many mediums. Recently, in the year 2021, we invited a Workshop Poet and Artist to conduct a workshop with My Voice Media Center. He was patient, courageous and inventive. He helped more than just participants, during the 2-day workshop that was held via ZOOM at My Voice. He invited me, the Project Coordinator, to join in the Session, as I did, I was enlightened by words and the poetry that lives inside the artist.
Michael Jasso, the Instructor for the workshop runs a Facebook Group called, Founder (company) of Loud Mouth Poetry Jam and attends College of the Sequoias, and is an accomplished Spoken Word Artist and has been working with issues in Mental Health he mentioned as we prepared to have him at My Voice Media Center. Unfortunately, I was very taken by his methods of creating poetry and really allowing the word to flow through various avenues of development, that I do not have any screen shots of the Session. Five to Seven finished poems came from these two sessions and I would like to share mine and then let you in on the secrets of the trade.
(Please check out M. Jasso on FACEBOOK and FACEBOOK The Source LGBT and search for their live poetry jams ran by Michael Jasso; https://www.facebook.com/thesourcelgbt)
Poem: Untitled
by Halonnah Hope Kay
"I had a hard childhood, but art became my dream, and success.
Success bridges us between accomplishment, being unique, true self and human needs.
To Dream is a determination inside we all hold onto and carefully tend to."
This poem could not have been more creative in the essence of placing through integrity certain choice words, or in the Art of Language, Diction, or word choice. The poem was created by the direction of M. Jasso for each of us that we will first write a 12 word Writing Prompt, our own story. His Prompt: Write your "story" in 12 words. Then we were to circle one word from this sentence that we thought was the most important, positive, and was strong, and then another. With two words circled we picked one of the words and wrote a definition for it, our true definition. (If you look at the play on words here you are beginning to write your own definition, I thought, wow!)
Then we read these as we had the first sentence, our story. The second word we we instructed to ONLY use 14 words. This could be two sentences, but ONLY 14 words. This contains and constructs the emotional attachments and storms of imaginary booms that may happen when given one word. The artist and poet restricts and creates an organized strain of thought, while opening the mind to the boundaries. What do I really want to say? What words do I have? How many?
In creating this new sentence with our second circled word they begin connecting as sentences and the outcome was amazing, when all three sentences were read together. A whole story poetically and artistically driven, a free verse short story. I occasionally write poetry, looking up to the many poets that have lived and I have heard, ye this occasion I felt like I had created that which I sought. The second workshop was, Prompt: Building a Word Bank, and again M. Jasso had an innovative, creative technique to help us do so. Thank you Michael Jasso for this wonderful opportunity to express myself in words again! We wish you all the luck!
Some of our POETS include, our own Facilitator and Peer Support Specialist, Olivia Garza and our own Participants Vicky Leary and Nelson Medina.
So many of us feel the same connection to words, meanings, adjectives, reaching a higher understanding of ourselves, and reducing the Stigma of Mental Health through words. The beauty of studying this connection and living it in your own life is apparent in other artist's lives, as well. Take the article I found, Why Are So Many Poets Also Artists? ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com), and read the article word for word. You will discover the connection is not all that strange, or weird...do you know that poetry can be written in many types of ways from Haiku, Japanese 5-7-5, Syllable Technique, the Free Verse most are familiar with and many others. Try researching a poetry writing site and try you words at Poetry, try to express deeper meanings in things, deeper meanings in yourself, and search for a pathway that is rich in poetic design.
The artist, By Maggie Millner, of the article wrote about an artist by the name of –Valerie Hsiung, poet and singer said: "...I believe translation brings another dimension to a poet’s voice—which is the only thing that matters in poetry, or song, at the baseline—I believe that engaging deeply in any other discipline can deepen one’s writing practice..." (Why Are So Many Poets Also Artists? ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com))
–Matthea Harvey, poet and multimedia visual artist said: "...being a poet is about attentiveness, and that attentiveness doesn’t only translate into words." ((Why Are So Many Poets Also Artists? ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com))
If you need help reading poetry and to be inspired please go to: 11 New Poetry Books to Read (bookbub.com)-the article that inspired this post! (bookbub.com/blog/new-poetry-books)
Works and Resources:
Home (thesourcelgbt.org); Virtual Poetry Jam
PLEASE email all poetry to mvmc@artsconsortium.org to be PUBLISHED in this BLOG!
Thank you!
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