Great to Return to @WOLSyracuse with @MarcelleHaddix - Can It Really Be Ten Years? A Beautiful Decade, Indeed

It was 2009 when the first Writing Our Lives conference was hosted for young people in Syracuse, New York, and and when Dr. Marcelle Haddix and I received a School of Education collaborative research grant to pair a mentor with a doctoral student. The two of us had two things in common: a love of young people and a love for writing. Through her incredible network throughout Syracuse and our collaborative work at Nottingham High School, the first two years of WOL events far-surpassed anything either of us could imagine.

Why would 120+ kids walk in the pouring rain on a Saturday morning to participate in writing workshops at a community center? 

We surmised why, but wanted to hear from them.

They wanted to write, they weren't writing enough in school, and most importantly, they wanted to be heard. For two years I was lucky to work in partnership with Dr. Marcelle Haddix's vision, and to celebrate the excellence of Syracuse adolescent writers. The following year, I took the job to direct a National Writing Project site at Fairfield University, where the WOL movement crossed state-lines, and the influence of building a community to support young writers was at the core of what I hoped to do. Marcelle's influence on my vision, work ethic, hopes, dreams and goals has always been tremendous. Last night, many came together to celebrate the decade of Writing Our Lives work, including two young people who were in our after school program (now in their mid-twenties).

Phew. Hearing the words spoken about the program and Marcelle was amazing. Having the honor to hear Marcelle's words about me stopped me in my place. I'm in such awe of her, so hearing her gratitude built over 10 years triggered the tears (if she could hold back all night, I could hold back).

This morning, we are gathering once again for a day of free writing workshops for young people in the City of Syracuse. Fortunate for me, I will be presenting with William King and Jessica Baldizon, teachers from CT, and Abu Bility and Ali Adan, the ones and only from Cuse to the B'ports (Bridgeport and Brockport)(both of them teaching now...that is something). I look forward to the joy that will come. Meanwhile, I found a poem written in 2010 during the WOL event, scratched in a writers' notebook:

I’m just a man born to Syracuse (New York)
90% nerd-brain and 10% true dork,
who scribbles his ideas in the porkity-pork-pork of dreams-
or, at least this is what it sometimes seems,
when I unleash the language streams into notebooks
that are written by you all (Writing our Lives),
You, the moonbeam captives wrapped
in a million paper reams of finding the exact words.

I’m just a man born to Syracuse (New York)
A madman emptying an ocean with a poetic fork
and, today, I’m talking through a teaching torque,
a tongue-twisted twizzling-tapdancing dork
who offers this poem to you all (Writing Our Lives).

I croak communication on a lily pad that strives,
ambitiously delivering the way my mind drives,
with honey-dipped words buzzing with the deliciousness of hives,
those busy-buzzing flutterbugs and the winged weirdness that arrives
to the horizon of kismet and our galaxy of hope…
(I live my life clean cuz poetry’s my dope.)

I’m just a man born to Syracuse (New York)
delivering underground writers as your emcee bird-stork
introducing verbal blends in this rhythm-rap gone berzerk,
Ah, Bryan, chill-out, they already know you’re that jumpy jerk
who is looking for the pitter-patterned perk
of writing history with you all (Writing Our Lives)

& I surmise beyond the scholastic lies and after all the political cries,
societal succotash and educational drivebys,
and the frustration of low expectations –
trust me, I know the many sighs –
that each of you stand part of a larger universe…
So, with pens to papers
thoughts to ink, you must rehearse,
to push the boundaries, to break the deficit curse,
unraveling the workshop within you to reimburse
the soul of your magical minds.

So today this man finds himself before you with this muse:
a teacher, a writer, a thinker in Syracuse (New York),
These streets will make you feel brand new
& I’m with you to inspire, too, set fire to, what you must quickly do,
right here in Syracuse (New York)
with this opening, centralized call.
It’s autumn, so the leaves must fall, you all (Writing Our Lives)

It is common sense that self-doubt always deprives,
so I want you to take a moment to give yourself high-fives.
And let it be known we want you to thrive
To choose to live life enormously large – we want you to strive,
to create memories and opinions that come alive
in your own archive of a doodled imagination.

You must make the difference for navigating the circumference
of this global, so-you-think-you-can-dance, immense coincidence and circumstance 

where we ask you take a chance…No, take a stance,
and put your words onto the page…
(with them you can rage and upstage those who doubt
what we already know you can do.)

I’ve got some words to say…do you?
(and I hear that train coming, choo choo choo,
I think I can, I know I can, I am human, it’s true…)

But I’m just a man from Syracuse (New York)
90% bird-brain and 10% pure dork and,
celebrating my outside-the-box thinking, I’m here to uncork
the possibilities that live within you all (Writing Our Lives),
(cuz karma only survives when the young writer thrives
alive upon the notebook’s page.)

So, Syracuse (New York),
This is my rampage, the whacky sage on the stage
with a quest to enrage the words that live within you all (Writing Our Lives).
There you go, that is my call.

Here's to an irreplaceable decade.