Expressing Your Creativity and Queer Spirit
Last Thursday I found myself in a writing course called, Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Excavating the Writer Within. In all honesty I signed up on a whim after seeing a poster in the OUTside night club. I didn’t really read the poster too carefully and didn’t realize when I registered that I had just signed up for a workshop that involved poetry.
I’m a little shy by nature and when I arrived that evening I realized I did not know any of the group members. To make matters worse, many of the group members seemed to belong to the same pen club. In our first exercise, I found myself feeling rather self conscious when I learned that we were going to share what we had written. I floundered a bit before I got up the courage to read my poem. I thought it was terrible however the group of nine LGBT folks received my feeble attempt at prose very well.
I’m not sure what I had expected from the nine members of the LGBT group. Did I actually think that they would judge me for my writing skills? They did anything but. They made me feel comfortable and welcome, not only did they refrain from criticisms but they complimented me on my work. Imagine such an warm and generous group!
Even though poetry isn’t my passion I managed to get through it and actually have to admit that it was quite enjoyable. Ray McGinnis, author of, Writing the Sacred, was a great facilitator with some very creative ideas for writing. His expertise coupled with such awesome participants made it well worth my time.
Dawn Kress
Art on the Out Side
Regina, SK
www.artontheoutside.ca
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