Class Title: The Wonderful, Awful Stories She Had to Tell: Telling Stories Through Poetry Instructor: Lorraine Mejia-Green Class Term: We are not accepting any more enrollments for Lorraine's class; the class has started. Synopsis In this five-unit class, you will learn how to tell your stories—whether wonderful or awful, and often a little of both—through the creative medium of poetry. We all have stories to tell, stories that must be told. Our stories are not only gifts to us, but gifts to this world. Telling your stories through poetry can be a healing, empowering, joyful process. Beginning poets embraced, all writing levels welcomed with joy! Class Description Through thoughtful writing exercises and model poems from some of the great poets of our time, poet and teacher Lorraine Mejia-Green will help you tap into the many stories you have to tell, write your own stories through poetry with confidence, understand the importance of your stories, and continue writing more poetry! The class will use email and a Yahoo group for communication. For each unit, the instructor will provide exercises, a list of poems, and online links to find these poems. Outline Unit 1: First Stories & First Family: earliest memory poems; poems of your birth family, to include mother poems, father poems, extended family poems, and other first family stories. Unit 2: First Home and First Love Poems: poems of your first home or homes, to include landscape poems and stories of where you grew up and its importance in your life story and/or memory; stories of first loves. Will not only include first "puppy" love or first true love, but also the things you remember loving as a child or young person—such wonderful stories! Unit 3: Stories of Sorrow: poems about the sorrows in your life. These stories are also often stories of healing, growth, and self-discovery. Unit 4: Stories of Mature Love: What do you love now? Discover the things you might not have known you love! Unit 5: Stories of the World: the other important stories that you need to tell! Finding a way to continue creating, writing your stories, and bringing them to the world (whether you wish to share them only with yourself or with others!). Student Skills, Equipment, and Time Required Email, ability to participate in Yahoo group, Internet access and ability to paste links into search engines. (The instructor will provide help with Yahoo and search if skills are limited.) Time required: 2-5 hours per week. (Students may, of course, spend as much time as they like, as reading and writing poetry is wonderful. Tuition/Fees for this course SCN members: $160. Non-SCN members: $200. Instructor Bio Born in Minnesota to a Mexican Mother and German American father, Lorraine Mejia-Green became a marathon runner, flamenco dancer, artist, editor, librarian, educator, poet, author, and storyteller. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a MLS in Youth Librarianship. Lorraine Mejia-Green's poems have won several awards, and have appeared in anthologies such as Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets of the Midwest and in literary journals including Willow Springs, Inkwell, and Calyx. She has taught poetry classes to children, teens, and adults all around the country.