Ekere Tallie: Poet

Courtesy of Ekere Tallie

   I met a poet this semester, at the "playshop" she led in our Jazz Lab. Her name is Ekere Tallie, and she's such a bright, open, thinking person.  Although she looked young and girlish with her green headband and brown leggings, she seemed so wise. Not only did she give good advice, but also she really seemed to value and see a deeper meaning behind the writing that we workshoppers shared.

 Of all the things that Ekere said, what stood out most to me was that:

-the job of the writer is to see and to hear
-writing is about details and coming up with your own unique angle on a subject
-smells and other senses bring up memories

    To practice those three things, Ekere brought a lopsided little apple for us to hold and to look at. For five minutes everybody wrote a description of it, and then we shared. For one girl, the fruit brought back memories of grocery shopping with her grandma. One man used his description to ruminate on human nature. And two others could only think of all the germs the apple had collected from being passed around! My on-the-spot paragraph wasn't very good, but I took one of the principles behind the exercise and used it in my story. Here's that bit:

  Eleanor let out a shaky breath and tested the cider. It was cool enough to drink, and she took it in sips. The warmth in her throat revived her, but the taste brought back a memory of picking basketfuls of cherries with her siblings in the summer.

That detail provided a little bit of character history and made her, I think, a tad more 3-D.
How can you use your own take on details that you sense, together with your own experience, to broaden your writing?



If you're interested to learn more about Ekere, you can visit her website!