How I String Words by Lucy Flattery-Vickness

We asked Lucy Flattery-Vickness, Oakland's 2017 Youth Poet Laureate to tell us about her creative process and Green Windows' role within it. Lucy first wrote in a Green Windows workshop when she was 14, part of a series of free workshops run for the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program at the Oakland Public Library. She's included a gorgeous poem, too. Thank you, Lucy! 

How I String Words
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It usually starts with a few words strung together, tightrope thin, and a mother-load of procrastination. This line, or assortment of words, will stew in the deepest, dankest parts of me, and it will stew and stew and stew. Then, maybe, I will find a moment with silence, and the sun will be out, and my room will be still and warm and clean. Something may have just happened that requires processing through an emotional sieve. When this happens, then I may find some success in writing a piece. 

Creating a piece that walks smooth and balanced on those first tightrope words is always challenging. I never start with a plan, or a beginning, middle, or end. I start with my ear, who tells me that combining my tightrope words will create a heartbeat. I am then left with the task of creating a poem backbone around that heartbeat. I guess you could say I write in reverse.

Green Windows revolutionized my writing process. I stumbled across the workshops and quickly fell in love. I realized that in the space of five minutes, I could create something I was proud of. It was momentous for me to discover that if I just kept the pen moving a whole body could come out — backbone, heartbeat, and all. I also learned something very important for my own well-being. I discovered that I could write about whatever was on my mind and people would listen, and that the process of being received was healing. Although Green Windows is by no means the only program that has helped me develop as a writer, it has always been an intimate space that has allowed me to find even more reasons to love writing. 

- Lucy Flattery-Vickness

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Poem
by Lucy Flattery-Vickness

Crescent moon
Curved
Like bodies of women
Like safety
Gentle
Like waves folding in on themselves
Like bodies of women
Crescents be powerful
Be holders of wisdom
As ancient as the sun
Be tops of hills
That forever hide the other
Sides of things
The tipping point 
If you turned the half moon on its side
Would it balance there?
If you tip a woman’s body 
Can you see her inner balance take over
We start in diaphragms
In slow breath
That render us fierce
Whisper laugh wisps of ghost stories amongst ourselves
Weave mythology and moonbeams 
Together on looms at midnight
Knit strength between fingertips
And name ourselves luna, and crescent, and conquerer
In out tongue, round back is for bearing
For soft landings
For rocking
Stories into existence
Stories of warriors
With full breasts
And children too
Draped in silver from head to toe
Warriors who moved waters
Who screamed into oceans and heard tides echo back
Who charmed waves, new just
How to make them shake their hips
In this woman
Half moon is company in midnight window
And warrior

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