Written by Ajanaé Dawkins
On Monday November 18th, I was honored to spend time with the LAM Collective at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. I focused our workshop on the hermit crab form, a form where a poem uses an existing form to shell the poem—-for example a receipt, a recipe, weather report, legal document, etc. I am always interested in what preconceived notions people bring about what poetry should be and how people are taught form and tradition. I love creating spaces for people to have their concept of what a poem can be shattered and witnessing how freely they create after.
We read hermit crab poems from Brittany Rogers’ Good Dress, and Courtney Faye Taylor’s, Concentrate. We talked about the ways hermit crab poems help people document history or make otherwise mundane artifacts intimate.
One of the poems we read, “Intake Form” by Brittany Rogers, takes the form of a therapist intake questionnaire. One student admitted that she thought I left my personal documents in their poem packet on accident. Another said that she didn’t understand how it was a poem. Amid our reading and discussion, I watched the realization of how the author was using this form to explore intimate themes of sexual trauma, domestic violence, reclamation of the body, and queerness. What began as participants being unsure if this counted as a poem or believing they were voyeurs into my personal life turned into an extended discussion about how this form turned a piece of paperwork into an interior exploration. Then there were the observations of what kind of documents exist in the world with their names on them and how revisiting those documents through poetry might give them autonomy in their recorded narratives. The poems that came out of this session blew my mind. Participants wrote poems in the form of legal documents, intake forms, receipts, horoscopes, and more. The poems were emotionally challenging and funny and full of grief and hopeful and angry and tender. At the close, one participant said that she would be writing these all the time now—now that she understood that a poem can be literally anything.
LAM Collective Poetry Workshops Reflection
Written by Damita, LAM Collective Member
The workshop’s primary focus was on poetic and literary composition characterized by particular styles, forms, and content. The integral parts of poetry – language, imagery, ideas, emotions – well up from the inner depths of one’s being. The imagination is poetry's breeding ground, and it allows an individual to self-express in full measure – not only their emotions but also their artistic and creative abilities. Participants in the workshop expressed distinct contributions, reflecting their individuality.
