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Featured Artist: Jamie Houghton
"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history." - As we are living it, our own history seems to fly by. Only in retrospect do we put words to our experiences. We share stories with friends or family, write in journals, create MySpace and Facebook pages to display our lives. These are the external venues we use to record our own history, but there is also an internal dialogue with the self. We tell ourselves things we do not tell others, we tell others a fraction of what we tell ourselves: we even project our internal stories onto others, presuming we know how others see us. So what is history? How does it approach truth? We know that we experience events and live to tell them, in whole or in part, to ourselves and to others. But when does this collage, this mental and verbal kaleidoscope, begin to approach the vital truth? Poetry is a tool for exploring what the mind contains. I remember being sixteen and being warned against my mind, against my impulses for exploration. Students in high school are told that their own minds are a dangerous place, not to be trusted. When I ask my students to “free-write” I give them a prompt and ask them to write whatever comes to mind. At first, it is difficult. Many become frustrated. Once they begin to explore the words and memories that come to mind, the pens move faster. I am giving them permission to trust their own minds. I am giving them permission to give voice to any history they choose. But the vital truth of poetry lies in its many faceted surfaces. If you tell someone a story about your life they experience the content, the tone of voice, perhaps your facial expression. Creating a poem allows you to inject a story with colors, images, and rhythms, which can suggest more than one history contained within. Like music, it lends the words dimensions beyond their ordinary meaning. With poetry, the mind can be communicated in closer proximity to its actual complexity. It is an enormous risk to express yourself through the written word, and through artistic expression. Thank you to all the students featured in torches n’ pitchforks for taking the risk to publish your histories here. Jamie Houghton
After receiving her B.A. in English Literature in 2006, Jamie Houghton traveled to Whitehorse, Yukon to perform and give workshops at The Longest Days Street Festival. Her workshops “Writing for Mental Health” and “Performing Poetry” were in part inspired by the work of Dr. James Pennebaker, who she interned with in 2005. After a brief stint as a medical writer she relocated to Bend, Oregon, where she works for The Nature of Words. Her poetry has won several honors including first place at the 2005 Philadelphia Open Poetry Contest, honorable mention in the Rising Star competition, and she has won Poetry Slams in New England, Texas, and Bend. She has taught poetry in schools in Redmond, Bend and Sisters Oregon, and most recently Crook County High School. |
