Heading to Haiti for Haitian Connection

Posted at 12:11 pm by Janine Harrison, on July 5, 2017

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Instead of my usual Second (or occasionally third…gulp!) Sunday Scribble, this month, I’ll be blogging either on the road or shortly after my return from Jeremie, Haiti (contingent upon wifi connection), where I’m going to teach a two-day poetry workshop for the not-for-profit organization, Haitian Connection, coordinated by the tireless and wonderful Renate Schneider.

I am very excited about teaching poetry in Jeremie, “The City of Poets,” in an intimate workshop setting to these young adults. I relish meeting the attendees. And I already know from last trip, October 2012, when I taught English as a Foreign Language and fiction, that I need to see teaching of the subject through new eyes, eliminating cultural allusions that won’t make sense to this audience and considering their possible frames of reference. Secondly, as this group’s English proficiency levels will likely vary, there may or may not be a translator.

As much as I’m looking forward to the adventures that these challenges will bring, I am even more eager to meet and hug two students I’ve been mentoring online, Seby and Degraff, and see a student whom I met last trip, Benic, again; he has since become a teacher, himself.

The fun will begin when I arrive in Port-au-Prince next Monday. On Tuesday, I’ll then take a small plane to Jeremie in the rural west and start teaching that afternoon. Please stay tuned! Anecdotes and photos to follow!

Author: Janine Harrison

Janine Harrison freelances, teaches creative and freelance writing at American Public University, is a teaching artist, and serves as the 2017-18 Highland (IN) Poet Laureate. She wrote If We Were Birds. Her work has appeared in Veils, Halos, and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, A&U, Not Like the Rest of Us, The Wabash Watershed’s “Six Indiana Poets” feature, Treehouse Arts, and other publications. She is a poetry reader and reviewer for the Florida Review and a former Indiana Writers’ Consortium president. She speaks, reads, and leads workshops and other events around the Midwest. Janine lives in Northwest Indiana with her husband, fiction writer Michael Poore, and daughter, Jianna.

JANINE HARRISON