A creative writing workshop in Sarawak inspired students through poetry, self-expression, and storytelling beyond academic learning.
In May this year, I received an email from a Teach for Malaysia Fellow who was teaching at SMK Balai Ringin, a school in Serian, some 90 minutes from Kuching. She asked if I would conduct a creative writing workshop for her students; there were about 20 of them who were interested in storytelling and writing in English.
What a surprise and what a joy!
Workshop requests from schools usually come in for essay writing, oral presentation skills, or strategies for academic success, so this request for a creative writing workshop was unique, and welcome, indeed!
Why Creative Writing Workshops Matter for Students
In primary school, children are encouraged to read for pleasure; school libraries are full of books by the timeless Enid Blyton and more recently, the award-winning JK Rowling who has been credited with bringing many children worldwide back to the reading habit. Young students are encouraged to write descriptively and creatively, sharing stories full of adventure, mystery and even fantasy.
However, once they enter secondary school, students are constrained to writing academic essays, mostly channelled towards fulfilling examination requirements. Their time is spent reading for homework and exams rather than for pleasure. Fiction is put aside for the stuff of academic books and essay writing.
Sadly, creative writing has always taken a backseat to essay writing and is considered by some, a frivolity or even a luxury when academic success is paramount. This is especially so when STEM subjects are given the priority in the development of a nation. It is definitely essential that students delve into the hard sciences, technology, and mathematics. However, we must not forget the importance of cultivating creative thinking, expanding young minds’ imagination, giving life to creativity through writing and oration.
So, when I received the email requesting a creative writing workshop, I was thrilled! What an opportunity!
Poetry as a Creative Writing Workshop Approach
Given the short timeframe (only the single workshop), and the students’ varied levels English proficiency, I decided to conduct a poetry writing workshop. I had recently been experimenting in writing free verse and prose poetry for an anthology edited by my mentor Emeritus Professor Malachi Edwin Vethamani, so the possibilities of introducing young minds to poetry at this rare opportunity arose.
I decided to use the cinquain poem whose simple structure could guide the students to create poems through specific syllables per line. The modern cinquain poem, popularised by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey who was inspired by the Japanese haiku and tanka, is made up of five lines in the following order of syllables: 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
I had used this delightful poetry structure many years before when running a creative writing workshop at SK Nanga Delok, a primary school in the Lubok Antu District with the inspiring motto: Up! Up! SK Nanga Delok Up! The structure provides guidelines to students who are unsure of how to attempt poetry writing and the simple form allows even those with limited English vocabulary to express their thoughts and feelings.
Here, on our recently upgraded campus, sparkling for our 25th anniversary in Sarawak, I included in the workshop for the students from SMK Balai Ringin a video of the 22-year-old Amanda Gorman reading her poem “The Hill We Climb”, written specifically for the US presidential inauguration in 2021. The poem had been written after the capitol riots a few short weeks before, and the poet’s passion was evident not just in the words she had crafted, but also in the manner of her reading.
Fuelled by Gorman’s youth and passion, the students put pen to paper, creating poems about their own lives, their passions, and their loved ones. One of the most evocative and moving of the poems was a simple cinquain about the young student’s mother whom he had left behind in the longhouse while he pursued his studies at a boarding school. The simple structure of the cinquain poem belied the complexity of the emotions the student strove to express in the relationship he had with his mother.
The Lasting Value of Creative Writing Workshops
The success of the poetry writing workshop for the young students from SMK Balai Ringin gave me the idea to conduct the workshop for students participating in the Yayasan Sarawak-funded English Enhancement Programme that the university was running for students prior to their Foundation studies. Why not introduce a way for students to rest their minds from the rigours of academic endeavours and give them a way to be creative and an outlet for expressing their feelings, both positive and negative?
Starting out at university is no small feat. Breaking away from the familiarity of school and its well-worn structure of traditional rules and regulations, uniforms, teachers, and fellow students, and entering a whole different way of studying amid a vastly diverse community of people can be intimidating. Whether the students were nervous in this new environment, tired after hours of lessons while trying to find their place in this new system, the poetry writing workshop has been a success.
It was a joy, introducing creative writing through a workshop on poetry writing, and happily, for both the students and for me, we had a wonderful time expressing ourselves with at least one cinquain poem each. Up the poems flashed on the screens projected around the great hall. While some students were shy to read their poems out loud, others were happy to do so. There was humour, happiness, or pathos expressed in those poems.
And later, when I read the feedback from the students, I knew that I would continue to conduct poetry writing workshops. In spite of, or perhaps, because of the technology in our lives, we should make for ourselves, a place for quiet and a place for creative writing.
There is a place in this harried 21st century for letting our human minds do the thinking and the imagining and the creating. There’s a place for, as the students said in their feedback: “expressing ourselves for a bit”, “the beauty of poetry”, for “reading between the lines and the interpretation of poetry”. One student wrote, “I loved hearing and reading everyone’s poem.”
And as another student wrote in the feedback: “poetry is an expression of the heart” and this is what we should never forget; that humans are unique; we’re not machines, and we can express what’s in our hearts and we can share that in creative writing even if we never publish it or win a prize.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus. Dr Christina Yin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design and Arts at Swinburne’s Faculty of Business, Design and Arts.