Dec. 14 - “ ‘O, had I but followed the arts!’ Celebrating William Shakespeare (1616 - 2016)”

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Creative Writing by Beatriz Santos: The Black Pearl

In my first year as a young writer I would often find myself lost. I had no identity. I had no ideas. I had nothing. The door to my creative world had been closed shut. Every writer has a door to their creative world and it is their mission to find the password to open it. Mine? Mine is three words of the most important meaning in the American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe. Thinking of Poe makes words flow through my body an out of my pen and a poem, that can be such a hard task to start, flows right out of me.

For as long as I remembered

Since when she was a sprout

The door was always open

People getting in and out

Hagar, Harriet and Prim

Would walk out and in

Danoe, Abel and Bout

Would walk in and out

With water cans in their hands

With baskets on their shoulders

With a child strapped onto a chest

At least until someone sold her

Poor little Hafiza was small

But she was already working

Little did she know

The horror her future was holding

Skin dark as a Raven

Haunted by sadness and loss

Her poor body had no haven

Soon she would be sold at a high cost

Mr. Bleu was the name

Skin white as Ivory

An idle old man

His profession was slavery

With her small bare fingers

She was bought to clean pearls

But soon her Lord’s hands

Were all over her curls

As the years passed by

Se mourned her fate

Mr. Bleu’s Black Pearl

Had been definitely worth the wait

To her eyes she was doleful

To her eyes she was doomed

To his eyes she was beautiful

To his eyes she had bloomed

For as the Black Cat

As the Black Raven

The Black Pearl

With bad luck, gave in

One day at dawn

The Black Pearl arose

With only one swing

Everything came to a close

People tell it differently

I don’t know what’s true

But I know that Hafiza

Killed the old white Mr. Bleu

With a knife or a pan

With what she had at hand

When she killed Mr. Bleu

It was also her end

And the old man’s soul

Lying on the cold stone floor

Shall be lifted

Nevermore

The little girl’s hands

That once cleaned pearls

Had now killed a man

That dared to touch her curls

Now she lies on the floor

As white as her soul

She has freed herself

Her body is now whole!

My poem/ story is mostly based on Walt Whitman and his idea of growth and death and how death is not an end but a new beginning, that’s why the character Hafiza killed herself. I also tried to portray the beauty accentuated by sadness that is a topic in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. To the character’s eyes she was becoming sadder and doleful but for Mr. Bleu she was more beautiful than ever. I also took inspiration in “The Black Cat” by E. A. Poe because I like his inclination for topics like death and violence. Throughout, I also tried to incorporate references as “the black cat”, “the raven” and the final stanza on “The Raven” when describing the death of Mr. Bleu.

Creative Writing by Daniela Coelho: Whitman / The Stars

My username: Whitman

My password: the_stars

Studying the river

And its flow

I thought about how I’d like to reverse life

And make the night slow.

I then stared at the stars, oh they are art!

They seemed so sparkly,

They could calm my heart…

Perhaps even stop wars!

Under this dark sky

With the woods surrounding me,

I drifted to sleep easily.

With a sigh I flew high.

High above the sky,

I found myself among those stars,

They looked so similar to me.

Oh Emerson! Oh Whitman!

How could I have been afraid to die?

I then woke up everywhere*

With the image of the moon in my head.

Its shape resembled

The realization I had had.

* I decided to change “somewhere else” to “everywhere”, due to the idea of decomposition and growth I get from Whitman’s poetry. The speaker dies, his body is decomposed and then grows everywhere or is diffused, like grass that covers graves.

Creative Writing by Matilde Gouveia: Knickerbocker

Ah, Knickebocker

What a fun name to say!

Doesn't matter if it's made up,

Have you heard the stories he relayed?

Poor Rip Van Winkle,

His kindness and laziness unmatched

Found a party up in the mountains

And dozed away twenty years past!

(Could he possibly be

The Sleeper Whitman aspired to be?)

Then the terrifying, hauntingly story

Of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A horseman with no head,

Lopping of others instead!

(Could it be, as a curse,

He had succumbed to the Imp of Perverse?)

You cannot simply escape from the Horseman,

Crossing a certain bridge is just a diversion.

This is why this writer

Is the password to my mind.

The inspiration to the creation

Of stories I shall unravel in time.

Explanation: The poem is based on the stories written by Diedrich Knickebocker (a persona of the satirist Washington Irving). The first story, Rip Van Winkle, could be compared to Whitman, not just with "The Sleepers" but also "Song of Myself" (as the character and poetic subject both "loafe"). "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Imp of the Perverse" both have characters that have the impulse to kill and the supernatural element.

Escrita Criativa de Francisca Matos

Caro Henry,

A felicidade é dos que trepam por escadas de incêndio e caminham por telhados lisboetas, miradouros improvisados quando a Senhora do Monte está cheia de turistas. A felicidade é de quem se refugia à beira de um lago e é livre, tendo os pássaros como vizinhos e encarando as manhãs como um convite para uma vida simples e inocente. A felicidade é de quem tem tempo.

Henry, invejo-te  - o tempo é uma catástrofe sagrada de relógios heirloom que não cabe no meu pulso. Adormeço no comboio com os livros sobre as pernas em vez de os ler. Manhãs desperdiçadas. As minhas manhãs deveriam ser passadas da seguinte forma: apanhar um comboio e passar a hora a ler os pensamentos dos outros - quando o sol está escondido e as estrelas cessam de brilhar, acendemos os candeeiros antigos, como Emerson dizia aos scholars. De seguida, trocar de linha - apanhar o comboio no qual eu sou a única passageira. Este comboio, é o comboio do meu próprio pensamento e o seu destino é incerto, até agora um acaso incompreensível.  A questão, Henry, é se chegarei ao meu próprio Walden, e se sim, onde. Será nesse Walden que ganharei coragem de escrever, de falar, de decidir?

Acredito firmemente que as coisas são extraordinárias. Se disser a palavra “pavimento” surgirão imagens diferentes nas nossas mentes e isso é extraordinário. Pensei nisso durante uma viagem de comboio. No entanto, é como te digo, falta-me tempo e coragem. O que não me falta é medo, de chegar ao destino desse comboio só meu e encontrar tudo diferente.

Não sei ao certo porque te escrevo.

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Francisca