ENG 150-Exploring the Self Through Creative Writing-Cyril Dabydeen

In May, I had the pleasure to speak with 22 secondary school students in Cyril's workshop at the University of Ottawa. The students ranged in ages from 14-16 years old. I read them a few of my poems and then talked to them about the ways in which young people can hone their craft as writers and begin to publish. A blog entry about opportunities for writers under 19 appears at the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter blog.

I also went there to hear about their experiences as young writers and to find out about what the role of poetry is in their curricula. The students came from a variety of secondary schools in the region. Most of them were taking or had taken some form of poetry instruction and the focus was primarily form and types of poetry. Very few of the students had met living Canadian poets in their classes before. This workshop was an opportunity for them to do so. Aside from me, they were also visited by Anita Lahey of Arc and their instructor was well-known Ottawa poet and fiction writer Cyril Dabydeen. I shared with them some options for publishing, including D.I.Y zine making, which fascinated and excited them as much as it does me!

One of my long-term visions for Bywords is to get young people excited about poetry and to raise awareness about current Canadian poetry. For that reason Bywords will one day host a poetry contest for young writers. In the meantime, when young writers are kind enough to share their work with us via the University of Ottawa English 150 workshop, we publish it and invite them to read.

In 2006, former Bywords editor Jesse Ferguson taught ENG 150 and we published some of his students' poetry. See the May, 2006 issue in the Archives and also the summer 2006 issue of the Bywords Quarterly Journal.

This year two students from the current workshop bravely offered to share their work: Lesley Mayhew and Misha Kalachov. Click on "Contents" to read the writing of these budding poets.

If you know of opportunities for young writers, particularly in Ottawa, such as workshops, contests, journals aimed specifically at writers under 19, please let me know. And stay tuned for our contest, which will take a while to organize but will begin sometime in the not so far future.

Amanda Earl