On Friday, I got to skip school (yay!) to go to school with my mom. My mom teaches creative writing at NC State, and she and her colleagues had organized a special event where college students, professors, and anyone in the Wolfpack can come to the library to make poetry comics.
There was a whole class, and it was super fun. It happened in a library room called the Fishbowl Forum. The room was circle-shaped, with glass walls, and there were tables all around the room. The tables were made of whiteboard, so you could draw and write on them with a dry erase marker.
The class was focused on climate anxiety and climate grief, which are feelings you can get when you think about global warming and feel nervous, scared, or sad. That happens to me sometimes when I think about the ocean, or when trees get cut down near my house. The class was taught by three poets and artists named Melissa, Sommer, and Aaron.
First, Melissa read us some poems, like “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and talked with us about them. Then Sommer talked to us about poetry comics, and Aaron talked about lettering. While the class was happening, I was kind of inspired by the poetry comics, so I started doodling snails. Then I thought that would be a really funny comics idea, so I started making comics about snails, such as:
-The snails go to the museum
-The snails go backpacking
-The snails visit Alaska; and
-The snails get a speeding ticket
After we had dinner with everybody, we went to the Stewart Theatre in the student union where had tickets and passed them out to people. Then we all got to see Small Island, Big Song. It’s a group of musicians from island nations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, such as Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, and Taiwan.
They performed songs and did dances, and it was super cool. I think the most powerful part was the dance about the dodo bird (the dodo was from Mauritius, but is now extinct). Or maybe the song about the disappearance of the coral reefs around Papua New Guinea (a quarter of all ocean life depends on coral reefs for survival). Small Island, Big Song also included Charly Lowry, a Lumbee/Tuscarora musician who performed with them, and an eight-year-old member of the Lumbee tribe.
At intermission, I got ice cream from the Howling Cow. It was really good, but gigantic and super hard to finish in a ten-minute intermission. I was about to throw it away, when this nice lady, one of the staff named Ariel, said that she had a freezer in her office and said that she could keep it for me. That was both a nice thing to do and an eco-friendly idea, since food waste is bad for the planet!
On the way home, I talked with my mom about how I could make a comic of the snails teaching you about eco-friendly choices. When the workshop started the next morning, I was very excited to start on the comic. I made a nine-panel comic with some of the healthy snail suggestions on one panel, then the snails making the healthy choices on the next. These included:
-The snails choose the right-sized house for them
-The snails are vegetarians
-The snails travel slow (but get there eventually)
My mom cut out letters for the cover, and we glued them on. By the end of the workshop, I was proud of my work. The college students made some great comics, poetry, and art too.
I told my mom that I’d like to be college-schooled (instead of school-schooled or home-schooled). She said one day.
Here is a video of Small Island, Big Song if you’d like to check them out:
How was your weekend, Frog Troublers? We also went to ClydeFest and planted tomatoes.
P.S.
Why are vampires bad at apologizing?
(They can’t self-reflect.)
Love the snails. Please do more and share with us. I would enjoy their adventures. Thank you for the song. Very powerful, very beautiful.
Bea,
My name is Paul Watts (that's one of my names anyway), and I was your mother's creative writing student at NCSU four years ago. I can't believe it has been that long. You actually were a very important reader for me during that time. You and your mom read a story of mine about La Llorona and a girl named Paulina. Your perspective as a young reader was just as valuable to me as any other person's in that program, so thank you. It is no surprise to me that you are already engaging with the writing process at a very high level, from thoughts to art. The empathy you show for the planet Earth is also inspiring, and your anxieties resonate within me. I'm currently reading "The Climate Book" by Greta Thunberg, who is one of my favorite activists (one of many). I wonder who your favorite activists are? The Climate Book breaks down some ugly realities. Maybe your snail comic can inspire somebody to think and act differently. I would love if my art and teaching was capable of doing that. I'm still trying. I haven't reached my goals yet, but I haven't given up either. I have not failed until I give up, and my disappointments are how I learn to succeed. I'm working on a new novel right now that I am very excited about, some climate-inspired middle grade science fiction (is that a term? maybe I should use it as a genre). Anyway, I'm not ready for readers yet; if all goes accordingly, I will be by the end of the summer, and I am hoping that you and your mother can still be a part of my writing process.
Keep up the good work,
Paul Mikel Watts-Offret