Writing and Rewriting the Self

For several years now, Professor Ruderman has been facilitating Writing and Rewriting the Self (WRS), a poetry-writing workshop for people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.2 Since February of 2018, Ruderman, who developed the curriculum, has offered WRS as an on-going part of The Day Reporting Program (DRP) of Newark OH, a program for people charged with felony drug possession. Through its promotion of ideas and values grounded in romanticism as well as the anonymous publication of poems by people with addiction, the program hopes not only to help people with addiction but also to raise awareness of and foster a compassionate dialogue around the problem of addiction. WRS meets once a week, on Wednesdays, at the Day Reporting Center. Although the workshop is in no way religious, we meet in a circle and begin and end the sessions with the “serenity prayer,” the prayer that usually opens (and often closes) twelve-step meetings. This is done in order to remind ourselves of our common (secular) connection as well as to create a safe space in which an atmosphere of trust and intimacy might develop. At the beginning of the semester, the participants are each given a hard-bound and lined “Moleskin” journal, along with a pen, and a folder with a few pages of notes about poetic technique and terminology. These journals are their lifelines, in which they can write any and all of their deepest or most superficial thoughts and feelings. I also include my email and phone number to every participant in the workshop. Most weeks, the workshop follows a certain pattern. We meet for one and a half hours, the first hour of which is taken up with reading and discussing a poem by an established (often romantic-era) poet, doing a writing exercise, and then workshopping (reading, relating to, and commenting on) 1-3 poems by 1 Alschuler, M. “Healing from Addictions Through Poetry Therapy.” Journal of Poetry Therapy (2000) 13: 165; also, Howard, A. “The Effects of Music and Poetry Therapy on the Treatment of Women and Adolescents with Chemical Addictions.” Journal of Poetry Therapy (1997) 11: 81.) 2 Yousef, Nancy. Romantic Intimacy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013) 69 3 Culler, Jonathan. Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA; London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2015) 350. D. B. Ruderman Narrative – SAG application participants in the workshop. (The poems have been emailed to me in advance and then put up on my webpage under a password-protected tab.) Afterwards (for a half hour), I meet one on one with writers to discuss their poems in greater detail. Some of the poets submit their poems to be published anonymously on the Newark Think Tank on Poverty webpage or in Justice, the bi-monthly newsletter of NTTP: http://www.newarkthinktank.org/wrs_poetry The poems are presented anonymously, not primarily to protect the identity of the writer, but rather to reflect that writing, like healing, takes place in community, with the active support of those who have gone through or are going through similar experiences. As such, the poems express the beauty, hope, anger, fear, and frustration of all people in recovery. If a participant’s poem is chosen to be published, they are given a $20 Subway gift card. (Note: this current series of workshops (Sept, 2018 – April, 2019) is fully supported by an OSU-Newark Outreach & Engagement grant as well as an ArtSTART grant from the Ohio Arts Council [OAC]).