Roya Marsh talks about the subject matter of her poetry. “I’m gay, so all my poems are going to be gay, thanks,” she said.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
SARANAC LAKE — Dozens of poetry enthusiasts from across the Tri-Lakes packed into the Adirondack Center for Writing in Saranac Lake Thursday night to hear four renowned poets read their poems about queer relationships, parent-child relationships, hormone therapy, immigration and ice skating at Rockefeller Center.
The featured poets — Jon Sands, Roya Marsh, Jose Olivarez and Noah Arhm Choi — have six books and more than 13 literary prizes and fellowships between them. They made the trip to the Adirondacks to participate in ACW’s annual High School Writing Retreat at Paul Smith’s College, a two-day writing workshop which this year saw 187 high school students from across the Adirondacks.
“Poetry on Broadway” is a recent addition to the writing retreat schedule. A few years ago, ACW Executive Director Nathalie Thill realized that, with a handful of accomplished poets already at her disposal, she could simultaneously enrich high schoolers’ writing lives and bring art to the general public.
“It occurred to me that the general public didn’t have access to this amazing work. What a shame that was,” Thill said. “(High school students) all got to work with these incredible poets for two days and the adults just get them for a little while. For one of the few times in life, it’s actually better to be a teenager.”
Sands, who is also on ACW’s advisory board, estimates that he’s participated in one or two writing programs a year in the Adirondacks for the past decade. While introducing his poems, he said that he has read his poetry over the PA system at Saranac Lake High School and performed a more than two-hour-long set at FCI Ray Brook in partnership with ACW. He is a fixture at the High School Writing Retreat.
Noah Arhm Choi introduces a poem about undergoing hormone therapy at Poetry on Broadway at the Adirondack Center for Writing in Saranac Lake Friday. “Not everything about doing puberty again in your thirties can be fun,” they said.
(Enterprise photo —Sydney Emerson)
“I’m not here all year, so I don’t get to see these kids in their everyday life, but the energy around the High School Writing Retreat feels like a space where a large group of kids feels like they can articulate — not just be themselves, but articulate themselves — and have it immediately stated out loud and affirmed and it’s super powerful every year,” Sands said.
It was Olivarez’s third time in Saranac Lake for the workshop. He and Sands co-hosted a podcast together — “The Poetry Gods” — and Sands recommended him to Thill.
“The writing workshops were really beautiful,” Olivarez said. “The young people wrote really great poems and it was also really beautiful to hear them share what they wrote with each other and see how they held each other up afterwards.”
For Choi, who returned to the workshop for a second time this year, working with students and reading for the community is a way to increase minority representation and share their unique perspective as a transgender person of color.
“It’s always about, like, what do I want my message to be in a room and how I challenge myself with both newer poems and things that feel fresher and then the established poems,” said Choi, who uses they/them pronouns. “But, I’m trying to offer representation of especially Korean-American queerness and transness that I didn’t have growing up.”
Jose Olivarez reads from his recently-published second book of poetry, “Promises of Gold.” The book features Spanish translations of all of his poems.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
At the reading, they shared some works-in-progress, including a poem about “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Though they read their work in front of audiences frequently, they said they are “nervous every single time” before they read.
“It’s scary and terrifying, but poetry’s such a incredible venue in which to grapple with that vulnerability and share the things that you believe in sharing,” they said. “I just love poems so much. It’s such a cool way to connect with people.”
Marsh, another regular at the annual workshop, estimated that she had participated in around six over the years. Aside from writing poetry, she is also an educator, activist and PEN America Emerging Voices Mentor — that is, a mentor for early-career writers. She said that working with students inspires her poetry.
“It keeps my candle burning, you know. It keeps my flame lit, and it pushes me further. It reminds me of my purpose, the purpose of this work, the purpose of these kinds of spaces,” Marsh said. “The joy of being able to engage with people from such a very different walk of life and still find so much resonance in these spaces is not something I could fathom unless I’d lived it.”
Sands said poetry, to him, is all about “emotional history” — which is also the name of the writing workshop he runs.
“If you think about the world exclusively politically or exclusively through a lens of capitalism or achievement or finances, then you’re missing, I think, at the core, the thing that makes us people is that all of the systems that we exist in are made up of people who are run by their emotions,” he said. “Poetry is how we turn our experiences into something that we can see and hold and process.”
