As The Porch's summer intern, I had the joy of witnessing the Camp SLANT sessions for 4th-6th graders and 7th-9th graders. The kids enjoyed workshops on fiction and poetry throughout the week. They created flags for their own invented countries, wrote occasional poems and haikus, and shared their work with each other. I was also roped into a few rounds of tag during break time. The kids formed new friendships based on their shared love of writing.

During each week I was given the opportunity to host a songwriting workshop for the kids. Together, we listened to “I Could Drive You Crazy” by Sierra Ferrell (which I got to see performed live by Ferrell recently at the Eastside Bowl—a very full circle moment for me) for inspiration as well as to observe the rhyme scheme and form. I then had the kids write their own four line poems with an ABAB rhyme scheme and eight syllables per line. I asked for contributions of either their first and third line or second and fourth to form a collaborative nonsense song.

We wrote several verses together, decided which part felt like a chorus, and then discussed what the emerging theme was. For the 4th-6th graders it was a girl in love with a tree. They enjoyed leaning into the nonsense aspect with the chorus, but many started piping up with lines that added to the theme we had discovered together.

Listen to "Nonsense"

For the 7th-9th graders we wrote about a dystopian landscape filled with zombies and dinosaurs and kidnapped poets (a major distinction between age groups was found here).

Listen to "Zombies Bit Off My Head"

I reveled in the opportunity to write with the kids—it was very heartwarming, whether we were writing about evil minions or the twisted grin of an ancient tree.

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