‘Tis The Season (To Be Exclusive)

We celebrated our second annual Exclusive Ink Holiday Party on Thursday, Dec. 6. Per tradition, the gathering commenced with food and smiles, as (from left) Lexie, Michelle, Darlene, Whitney, and Elizabeth can attest.

Paula, Vivian, and Benji grub up and give the thumbs up. Kudos to the trio for delivering strong readings of their best work after chowing down.

A.J. and Rashad bond over hot cheetos, which, by a show of plates, were voted Exclusive Ink’s No. 1 favorite snack by a wide margin.

Like last December, all of our Exclusive Ink students received books from the Butler Writers. Here, Zuri unwraps Tupac Shakur’s The Rose That Grew From Concrete, much to her delight.

The new Exclusive Ink Fall 2012 group photo, a merry snapshot that would certainly look great on a holiday card or up on the wall in Room 237. Big thanks to everyone, Shortridge students and Butler tutors alike, for another wonderful semester.

Photos by Michelle Trainor and Susan Sutherlin

The Dogs And The Devils

Good things happen when the Butler Bulldogs and the Shortridge Blue Devils get together. If you need proof, check out the following poems that are destined for publication in our second Exclusive Ink print magazine due out this spring.

“Gun” by Benji
Money Line: In unfortunate neighborhoods, a familiar sound acts like a 10:30 alarm, / Letting all be known that the violence being done is ever growing like a farm. / Maybe it’s the role models they watch and listen to. / If good modeling was straight, they’d be as straight as a cashew.

“The Dogs And The Devils” by Darlene
Money Line: The Dogs and the Devils, / hand in hand, / living through the actions / of pen and pad. / Creating the worlds, / they most desire, / the Dogs and the Devils / have the power. 

“Dry My Hands” by Zuri
Money Line: Why do I have to carry / Your broken smiles and / Stolen cookie lies / The ones we promised lookin’ into mama’s eyes?

“F.U.N.” by Isiah
Money Line: What happened to childhood dreams? / Now it’s minimum-wage manual labor. / Still stuck in that phone booth with metal bars, / and the state gave you a quarter, / but the phone lines are cut loose / and the repairmen aren’t going to come. / Yet still, instead of doing what needs to be done, / we decide to get deceived by what seems to be.

“Heartache’s Quest” by Eric
Money Line: Cupid’s bow can only shoot a message in a direction that inflicts infection / That can only be treated with a extended injection of time and rejection. 

Team Effort

For members of Exclusive Ink, Room 238 is like a gym for all of us where we put in the extra hours of practice and hone our academic skills. In this way, we’re sort of team of writers, with the mentors serving as coaches.

As with any new team, even some returning members have some growing pains and an adjustment period, some come in as renewed superstars, some first-year players blow you away with their raw talent that has yet to be controlled and channeled for effective use. Some coaches click with certain players better than others. When you come together as a team and stay motivated towards the same goal, the results can be pretty astounding.

One of the best examples of growth in one of our writers I’ve seen is in S––. When I first worked with S––, it was hard to get him to say much more than two or three words at a time, much less write an entire poem on a page. And it would be the absolute end of the world to ask him to get up in front of everyone and read what he wrote. I felt bad that even his friends were giving him flak.

I didn’t work with S–– the next week, but Allyson did. She said that she noticed some marked improvement from the week before and even got him to write a paragraph, which made us mentors happy. We all knew that if he could just put something on the page, it would hopefully free up his mind a little.

However, the next session I had with him, he was timid again, almost to the point of being withdrawn. He didn’t write a word.

The following week, Doug and I ran a group exercise where we wrote a poem one word at a time. S–– was in our group. In this exercise, he was not only forced to write something, but he could contribute to the whole group project in a small, but noticeable way. The exercise was a resounding success. After struggling for the first few minutes, soon he was giving us words with more and more confidence. By the end, it was hard to get him to stop blurting out words, even when it was someone else’s turn. He was so taken with the exercise that he even offered to read the finished product. We were finally to move S–– past his concerns about “not being right” or “sounding dumb” and put some words down without worry.

The momentum continued. Not only did S–– volunteer to help lead the next week’s exercise within his group, he read again. We’ve seen him stand up for himself more often and be more assertive. Instead of putting his head down with his hood up when we ask for someone to help us out, he will contribute. And, perhaps what’s most astounding, he continues to write.

Contributed by Luke Wortley