Creative Writing from Mary Bethune School–Fall 2020
This fall, the creative writers of Mary Bethune School in Cleveland did all of our writing online. Check out our stories and poems here. This residency was funded by a teaching artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
Fourth Grade Persona Poems on Nearpod
In my House: Poems by Ms. Ardis’s 4th Graders
Picture Books about the Lost Children of Sudan by the 7th Grade
- Another Sudanese Journey
- A Long Trip to Safety: Sarah and Amai’s Adventure
- The Great Adventure Across Northern Africa
Fan Fiction from the Eighth Grade (The New Adventures of 5 Sisters from The Summer of the Mariposas)
Heroic Journeys from the Mary Bethune School 8th Grade
The eighth grade students in Ms. Uter and Ms. Inzana’s class during the 2019-2020 school year wrote this amazing anthology of hero’s journeys.
Read it here! Awesome Adventures
True Stories from Bethune Middle School Students
Thanks to a teaching artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council, the seventh graders at Mary Bethune School in Cleveland wrote these amazing personal narratives in the fall of 2019.
Read their anthology of true stories here.
Bethune 5th Grade Anthology 2019-2020
Check out these amazing poems and Greatest of All Time (GOAT Reviews) by Ms. Wadsworth’s 5th grade class at Mary Bethune K-8 School in Cleveland, Ohio!
Click here for “WHAT WE LOVE: PERSUASIVE ESSAYS & POEMS”
Funded with a teaching artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
Bethune Sixth Grade Anthology 2019-2020
Bethune 6th Grade Anthology… by Eli Millette
Playing with a Purpose!
Lake Erie Ink is going to the movies! Check out Playing with a Purpose, a series of videos exploring themes of racial equity and social justice hosted by Amy Schwabauer! Using creative story play and literacy enrichment our teaching artists will bring to life stories and poetry written by BIPOC. Although geared for kids in grades 1-4, these videos are sure to inspire and engage audiences of all ages.
We will have a total of 20 episodes released bi-weekly. If you would like to be regularly updated when episodes are released, subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn notifications on!
Huge thank you to the Cleveland Foundation and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Learn more about the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards here: https://www.anisfield-wolf.org/
Check out our first episode:
Meet New Genesis
We recently sat down with Rajah & Lionel (Aka New Genesis), two Lake Erie Ink alumni and co-members of a sibling rap duo to discuss their upcoming music, the new space jam movie and much more. Follow them on Instagram @newgenesisofficial!
Who did you know at Lake Erie Ink? How did you get involved?
R: We were actually at an open mic night at the B-side some years ago and Amy approached us and she said “I want you guys to come to open mic night!” so the very next day we went to an open mic night and after that, we just…
L: We never stopped going!
R: [Laughs] We just never stopped going. We did a bunch of other open mic nights and eventually she had us representing Lake Erie Ink at events.
L: Like Station hope and a lot of other events.
R: Yeah, and that’s how we got integrated into everything.
I noticed that pre-Covid, it seemed like you guys were out there. I was wondering, how did you transition into the new reality we’re in right now?
L: It was hard for a lot of reasons, considering how fast everything happened. There was one day everyone was around each other, everybody was meeting people, people were planning things and the next day it was like, “No. You gotta stop it all”. It was definitely hard to transition into it. But now that it’s been more time, we’ve been trying to adapt. We’ve been doing more livestreams, it’s given us more time to get into the studio and record and work more internally. We’ve pretty much been keeping busy in our own little bubble.
R: I think at first; on just a day-to-day normal life thing there was definitely a lot of anxiousness. It was like “oh how do we get groceries and be safe?” Just doing normal things at first was kind of weird. It’s funny because when we’re not performing we’re kind of homebodies anyways, so at first it wasn’t that weird but now that we’re getting into the long haul it’s like “wow I can’t go out anywhere”.
R: I feel like as far as creating, at first it was a little hard and then you get the writer’s block sometimes, because you’re like “What am I going to say during this time?” I think once we figured out how to do the livestreams, our first stream in April was N.G. Quaren-stream and it went so well. A lot of people were like “I really needed this”, “I’m just in my house”, “we just need something fun to do”. We did one for Halloween. We’re still finding ways to do live shows just in a virtual arena since we can’t do anything as long as this thing is active.
Could you tell me a little bit about what New Genesis is?
L: The group is primarily a music hip hop group. That’s something that we’ve always done. Even since we were smaller, we’ve grown up around music. We just always had that in us. So our main thing is we want to perform, we want to sing, we want to rap, things like that. It kind of stuck with us from when we were small. As time went on, we got into the poetry, we got into Lake Erie Ink and it developed into something bigger when it comes to our activism and it comes to talking about things that are going on in the community. Our first debut song was about Hurricane Maria and everything that happened in Puerto Rico. It developed into something way more than just the music. Primarily, we’re just artists, just music artists-outside of that we try to keep involved, we try to be active with things that really matter to us and things that could help on a bigger scale.
R: Yeah, music is definitely something that has always been around. It’s funny, at first I edged more toward singing when I was younger but then I got more into writing rap. At first I was scared to show it; I was kind of shy about it. Lionel, even when he was younger has always written raps. There’s literally binders of him in little kid handwriting writing raps, its just something that’s always kind of stuck around.
R: As we got older, I went to college for music engineering, so I started learning how to record. Once I had that knowledge, with my brother’s graduation money he bought all the home studio recording equipment and we started recording things. We record in our living room, we record all of our music at home and we do all the recording engineering/pre-mixing. We outsource for mastering but we do everything else ourselves.
R: It’s evolved from just being music. We started writing poetry and Lake Erie Ink picked us up when they saw us perform it at the B-side. Lionel was rapping and I was doing a spoken word poem for the first time. It’s just evolved. Even in our music and even in our poetry some of it’s just for fun and some of it’s to be creative but I think with a careful ear you can hear us sliding some reality into it and even some activism. Putting things that are thought provoking into our poetry or into our music. We kinda do a little bit of everything, the poetry the music and the activism and blend it together so we can diversify and still be true to who we are as artists.
It sounds like a lot of what you’ve done has evolved over time. Where do you see it going? Is there stuff you really want to try you haven’t got to yet?
L: I feel like the road that we’ve been going on, it’s been tough. There’s been a lot of, especially with the pandemic, there’s been a lot of roadblocks.
R: There’s been a lot of setbacks in the projects we’ve been trying to work on.
L: But I feel like that’s where it’s most important. That’s where you have to continue to go on the path that you set on because if it wasn’t meant to be, there wouldn’t be so many things that happen because of it. I feel like the road we’re going on now, it’s meant for something bigger.
R: The long term goal for New Genesis is longevity, we want to make music our full time career. I would love to see our music, especially the F.Y.A.’s, get airplay. And hopefully when this pandemic is over and it’s totally safe, I would love for us be able to return to performing and touring. I think we bring something very fresh to hip hop on a lot of levels, being siblings, Latin, LGBTQ+ representation, talking about mental health, etc., and it would be a blessing for people to see us and feel like because we made it that they can too.
Why the nicknames “T” and “MonstAr”? And is that MonstAr like Space Jam Monstarr?
R: Yes! It’s been a nickname from my dad since I was little. I love the movie too, I think it’s so funny when they transform into the Monstarrs. It’s something that stuck!
L: My mom, her name starts with the letter T, and everyone says “You’re your mom’s twin”. So I had the nickname “Lil T” because of my mom, her name starts with the letter “T” and people keep on saying I’m her clone. But I grew, so I’m not little anymore, so I had to drop the little.
L: Of course, it’s still homage to my mom so you know. I feel like it means something so much bigger, because it’s just a small letter, but a letter makes a word, a word makes a sentence, a sentence makes a paragraph and then you get a whole story.
R: There’s an evolution to the name.
L: Exactly. It’s always gonna stay because that’s my momma.
How do you think people see your work? Do you care how people perceive your work?
R: I think any person who makes art, whatever medium that it is, I think the first thing is you want people to see it the way that you do. At the same time, the hope when we make music is that it finds its audience and connects with people in a way where they feel seen. Even if it’s just the music that’s fun, we hope people just have a good time listening to it.
R: When it comes to the more serious things, I think it comes back to the idea of representation. Me and Lionel, we’re a co-ed group and we’re family. So I think when a lot of people see that, it’s something they haven’t seen before. On top of that being Puerto Rican having Latinx representation is another layer.
R: We talk about our own experiences, and in talking about our own experiences whether its racism or classism or sexism or whatever we hope it connects with people. We have experiences where we perform and people do come up to us. I did this one poem, it was about colorism, and this girl came up to me and said “I’m black and I’m light skinned and sometimes I feel like I’m excluded from other people because they don’t feel like I’m black enough to fit in with them.” I was saying that about being Puerto Rican, that sometimes your own people can ostracize you in different ways, and just that feeling of “I felt that. I understand you. You were talking about something I’ve been through.” That’s a really great feeling. At the same time, we have to create for ourselves and just hope people relate to it.
L: Like she said, there are certain things that we talk about, whether its racism, whether its activism, but we also talk about more personal things, like mental health. We have some things about mental health. Things that we have shared, things that we haven’t shared yet. Of course we hope it resonates with people.
L: At the same time, being an artist, it has to come authentically from you. It has to be an organic piece that you’re making. I always write for myself first. I always write what I feel is important to me, even if we’re just having fun with it, then I hope people see it the same way I do. If they don’t they don’t. If they do, they do. Either way is fine with me.
L: It’s just when you start worrying too much about what people are going to think of your art, how people are going to feel about it, that’s when you start creating bad art. You’re too worried about the public eye and what they’re going to think about it you’re no longer creating something that’s organically yours.
R: Yeah, we definitely discussed that. I know one of the questions you wrote down was about F.Y.A. Pt. 1 and I don’t know if you’ve seen the cover art but it’s us in strait jackets and have tape over our mouths. The idea was feeling muzzled, at some times, while we were trying to create and trying to have people understand our art. We want to be seen not just as poets and not just as activists but also as musicians, and we want people to see the amount of work and the amount of technicality that we put into it. When we write, we work really really hard. We always try to outdo the last thing we did. We hope people can see that too.
Can you talk a little more about F.Y.A.?
L: F.Y.A. is just an acronym.
R: Right now, F.Y.A. Pt. 1, since there is another part coming out, is the For Your Approval part of it.
L: And then F.Y.A. Pt. 2 is the F Your Approval part of it. Part 1 talks about how sometimes we feel a little muzzled in our art. We’ve had conversations with people where you can tell they expect something from you instead of just expecting your art from you. They want you to talk about what they want you to talk about, they want to censor you. Even in our poems, we have curses, we have profanity in our poems and in our music, and that’s just part of—
R: the process.
L: Right, the process. And we’ve had people say not to talk about this. When you’re talking about mental health, it’s like you can’t do that because there is such a stigma around mental health still. So F.Y.A. Pt. 1 is like do we have to talk about standard things you hear in rap music?
R: The stereotypes of what people think rap music is.
L: Do we have to censor every word that we say? Do we have to walk on eggshells every time we write a song or a poem?
R: And on the flip side, it’s like do I make myself so censored and so socially correct I’m no longer doing what I want to do so that it makes you happy, which is for your approval. Or, do I go completely the opposite way and buy into what you think the stereotypes of hip hop are?? Do you want me to talk about guns, do you want me to talk about drugs, do you want me to do this so it fits into your idea of what my music sounds like?
R: There’s two sides to the coin. You could be very proper and keep it in and people like you for that or you could be way out there and people would like you for that but it’s often so hard for someone to like what you do for what it is.
L: F.Y.A. Pt. 2 is just talking about how we’re not going to buy into it. We’re not going to fit ourselves in to a mold that we don’t belong in. We’re just going to be ourselves, whether people like it or not, whether people follow us, whether they don’t. It’s not going to matter because at the end of the day we are who we are.
That’s a cool project! As a follow up question – when you’re writing music, how do you navigate those expectations? Is it like how you described part II, you just have to make it clear you’re doing your own thing?
R: Yeah, you actually got it right on the nose. With the first project (F.Y.A. Pt. 1) – we were in our feelings about some stuff – and we wrote it, I had put together the beat. Even something sonically there – When it’s Lionels’ rap in the background you hear church bells. He says a line like, “should I be talking bout guns and drugs in order for you to start loving me” and in the background you hear that church bell. For me when I hear church bells they have a lot of meanings and in this case the meaning is death, like funerals.
R: Even in the lyrics we were talking about some real stuff that we were going through. People following the page, unfollowing the page, making a lot of comments on what we were creating, making suggestions like we needed to change what we were doing. One minute its like I accept you for the work you’re making and the next it’s like well you need to take a step back and not make the work your making.
R: For F.Y.A. Pt. 2, we wanted to buck all of that and let people have it, in a way. Not tell the listener off, but you know, just really put it out there!
L: I’ve heard people say all art is a revolution, in a sense. Art doesn’t come from you fitting in. A lot of artists are people that other people are like “that persons weird. Don’t talk to that person, don’t look at that person.” A lot of art wasn’t appreciated during its time.
R: That’s true.
L: For us, when we hear “you can’t do this. You shouldn’t talk about this. You should fit yourself into this.” We want to purposely do the opposite, in a way.
R: You’re pushing me to that point.
L: You can’t put me in a box because, inevitably, I’m going to want to break out of that box. It’s always about breaking that barrier people keep trying to set up and showing them “look, no matter what you try to box us in with, we’re going to be ourselves regardless.” You can’t change a person, just because it makes you uncomfortable or you don’t like what they say or what they do.
L: We always try to keep that mindset, we have to be authentic. We have to be completely genuine. Because at the end of the day, once we’re done making the art, once we’re done working, we still have to live with ourselves.
R: We have to be happy with what we made.
L: If we change ourselves for the sake of other people, when the art is made and business is done, are we going to be happy? Are we going to be proud of ourselves? If the answer is no, there is really no reason to make that kind of art in the first place.
This is my last question. Do you have any advice for people just starting out on the same creative path to you?
R: there’s a couple things that come to mind. The first thing is take the leap. I know that the night that Amy saw us, I wrote that first spoken word poem, and at the time I was used to only writing poetry that was meant to be read, not performed. So taking that leap led to everything else. Putting yourself out there is what leads to those opportunities. That’s not necessarily something to be afraid of.
R: the second thing would be to believe in yourself and believe in your work. I think with anything in life, and in this case with art, you have to be prepared that some people are going to like what you’re doing and some people are not. You have to be okay with that. As long as you’re happy with what you’re creating and you’re staying true to who you are, that’s really all that matters. Once you believe in yourself and your work it doesn’t matter how many no’s you get or how many doors shut in your face you’re going to have the tenacity to keep going and going until you get that opportunity that takes you to where you wanna go. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and be okay with people both liking what you do and not.
L: The advice I’d give is similar. Don’t be afraid. As I mentioned in almost every one of your questions, be genuinely you. As she said, there’s going to be people that like it, there’s going to be people that don’t. But at the end of the day, your art has to extend from you. It has to come from a genuine place.
L: There’s a lot of kids that write poetry because they’re going through things, and they use it as an outlet for things they just can’t say so they have to put it into an art form. There’s people that write because that’s something they have to do and they write about anything. So whatever you choose to do and why you choose to do it, don’t conform because people are telling you to. Don’t give up on yourself because people don’t resonate to it. Just keep doing what you’re doing because the doors that open will be much much better than the doors that close. You’re always going to have another step into the right direction no matter what happens.
L: This is kind of a funny quote to bring up – in one of my favorite movies, Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse; “How do you know I’m not going to fail?” I don’t – it’s a leap of faith”. Of course you’re going to be nervous. To be nervous is a good thing because that tells you something big is about to happen. But if you’re afraid and you cower away from it you’re never going to know. You’ve never going to know what could be in store for you if you don’t take that leap in faith.
R: And I think too, it’s about finding your community. For us, Lake Erie Ink was just something spontaneous that happened – Amy approached us and the rest is history. Finding people that genuinely want to see you thrive, that genuinely want to support your craft and help is really important. If you’re around people that aren’t truly supportive of what you’re doing it’s not going to allow you to grow. It will stifle the progress you’re trying to make with your art. So find your community, find people that will inspire and encourage you to be who you authentically are and to make the art that you want to make.
L: Find your own compass, for sure.
Transformation
Lake Erie Ink: a writing space for youth has been working for 10 years to build a creative youth community. This summer, we came up with a way to inspire the community using a common theme. As summer changed over to fall, we wanted to bring people together again. This time, we reflected on the ever-changing world we live in with our new theme: Transformations.
Thank you to Mallory Phillips and the Coventry SID, who helped us secure the storefront and for supporting this community public art project. Thank you to Suzanne at Macs Backs who helped inspire those she knew to submit. And most of all, thank you to the over 40 of you who mailed, emailed or dropped off your submissions to us! They will be on view through December and then we will publish all in an anthology. All writers and artists will receive one copy free of charge. Other anthologies will be for a donation of $5.00.
If you want to learn more about this project or how to receive your copy of an anthology, email us at eli@lakeerieink.org. You can also check out our FB page and website for upcoming events and to learn more about what we do.
Celebrate #GivingTuesdayCLE with Lake Erie Ink
Dear friends of Lake Erie Ink,
We invite you to support Lake Erie Ink this #GivingTuesday. Your gift, no matter the amount, makes a difference for young writers in our community.
We need your support now more than ever! You give kids opportunities to develop their creative voice. Donate this giving Tuesday and let them know their stories matter.
With Gratitude,
“What is the most important thing your child gained from this experience?”
Interview With Erin Horan, LEI volunteer
What would a writing space for youth be without volunteers? We sat down for an interview with Erin Horan who has been volunteering with us for 2-3 years. Originally from Boston, she currently works as a Development and Communications Associate at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.
Who are you?
My name is Erin Rose Horan and I’m a writer living in Lakewood, Ohio. I work as a Development and Communications Associate at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. I’m a native of the Boston, MA area.
What is your role with Lake Erie Ink?
I volunteer with Lake Erie Ink’s writing programs, which means I help students engage with the activities, express themselves, explore their creativity, and hone their writing skills. By validating the students’ unique voices, I also help them develop self-confidence.
How long have you been working with us?
I’ve been involved with Lake Erie Ink for 2-3 years now.
Why do you continue to work with Lake Erie Ink?
I continue working with Lake Erie Ink because it is a truly special place! The staff have been so welcoming to me from Day 1. I’ve never felt like an outsider. There is a truly beautiful energy around LEI and I believe its work is so important for kids. Not only do I have fun in the sessions themselves, as an active participant, but I learn how to be a better teacher from observing and interacting with program staff (and I learn a lot from the kids, too!).
Can you speak to one moment in one of the writing programs that really stands out?
A young girl (middle school, I think) wrote a really mature poem about how her relationship with her mother was changing as she got a little older. The relationship between the two characters was not explicitly identified as mother and daughter, but there were enough subtle clues in there that you could sense who these people were. It was such an elegant and poignant picture of how strange it feels to no longer share all of your innermost thoughts and feelings with someone who still thinks you’re telling her everything, and how confusing it is to sort through what you want and need out of that relationship as it changes. I was totally floored by this girl’s talent and it reminded me how special Lake Erie Ink is: to give young people that space to explore feelings they may not otherwise have the opportunity to acknowledge, and to share those feelings in a supportive environment.
