Students learn value of self-expression

Taliah McGriff expects she'll be writing more, and not just for school.

“Because it was fun,” said Taliah, 10. “Because like they said, you can write anything, and it doesn't have to make sense.” “They” are the dozen or so other fourth and fifth graders in Taliah's after-school group at the Four Oaks Bridge neighborhood center in northeast Cedar Rapids.

Monday afternoon was their last session with playwright, poet and hiphop artist Idris Goodwin under the Bridge's Freedom Writers program.

The program, which started in November, is an effort “to demonstrate the lifelong relevance of writing and self-expression,” according to Four Oaks spokeswoman Lisa Pritchard.

Four Oaks hopes to offer the program, funded by an anonymous donor, every two years with other local writers and artists, Pritchard said.

“It's just to get them comfortable with expressing themselves on paper,” said Goodwin, 32, a Detroit native who moved to Iowa City with his wife last fall. “If I can leave them a little more comfortable writing something that's not a book report, that's good.” During the program's weekly sessions, Goodwin's students produced acrostics, poems and “free writing,” a streamof-conscious exercise he uses to get their creative juices flowing.

“I don't care what you're writing,” Goodwin told the youngsters after assigning them eight minutes of free writing. “Just keep writing.” Goodwin also led the group in a “roll call” chant in which each contributed a rhyming verse.

The idea was to bridge the gap between the poetry the students hear in school and the hip-hop and rap they hear just about everywhere else.

“It's all simile and hyperbole and metaphor,” said Goodwin, who's ap peared on HBO's “Def Poetry Slam” and produced more than a dozen of his own plays.

“Try ‘hat' and ‘cat' and ‘bat,' as much as you can,” Goodwin encouraged the students working over their rhymes.

“Then flip it around and try something else.” Ronald Arenas said he plans to continue writing “because it's relaxing. It's relaxing, because you can write quiet.” “It's a solitary pursuit,” agreed Goodwin.

“It's something you can go off and do, and not worry about the words,” Ronald said after the hourlong session. “It's being creative.”