Celebrate Reading at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa

Mahalo to everyone who came to Celebrate Reading! Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Christy Passion, and I read renshi poems from May, June, and the November Obama poems. We talked about how the poems were created, challenges experienced, and ways we were linked from 2008 until now. At this session, Jean was reunited with many students from Pearl City High School.

After lunch, Jean, Christy, and I listened to poems created by participants in our poetry workshop. Everyone wrote new poems and some participants used a poetry line from No Choice but to Follow as their title. Three groups were created where each participant received feedback on his/her poem. More renshi poems were written by some writers using the last line of their group member’s poem as the title of a new poem. Outstanding! We encourage all participants to post their poems in the Teachers’ Corner Prose and Poetry section: Renshi from Celebrate Reading at UHM.

For everyone who attended these sessions, how was your experience and what do you think about renshi poetry? How do you get ideas for poems? What is your writing process?