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August 2005
Bringing authentic voices of city in their most honest form
By Jeff Syroney
InkTank executive director, QCF magazine associate editor
On the InkTank...
One thing to remember is you don’t have to be a writer to write. You don’t have to be the world’s best speller or know everything there is to know about using grammar correctly to benefit from paper and ink. Whether your work is read by audiences far and wide or tucked away in a notebook for your eyes only, writing is important for many reasons.
We can learn through writing. We can use writing as a means of connecting the past with the present. By doing this we can remind ourselves of our mistakes, of our successes and our failures, and prepare for our future.
We can write to remember. We can preserve a written record of the things we never want to forget. OR….
We can write to forget. Through writing we can exhaust memories that have been weighing on our souls. We can write for closure. To grow tired and move forward. We can write for amnesia.
Writing can serve as a way to release emotions. Whatever it is we have bottled up inside, anger, sadness, or anxiety, happiness or excitement, we can always turn to writing as an outlet.
We can write to get a reaction. Through writing we can speak our minds freely. We can make others think. We can get people talking. We can move others to act.
Through writing we can have a resolution. We can put it all down on paper, sort it out, and come to a conclusion. Through writing we can work it out, whatever it might be.
We can write to be heard. We can write to say how we feel. Sometimes when we speak we get nervous and forget the things that need to be said. When we write we can take our time and get everything out. No pressure.
Through writing we can touch others. Or we can be touched. We can share our experiences and learn that we are not so different from the person sitting next to us. Writing can teach us that we are not alone. We can find comfort through writing.
On the Authors...
So many times it becomes easy for us to fall back into our comfortable assumptions about how and why the world works—or doesn’t work--the way it does.
Believing that bad people in long white t-shirts will take our things so that they can feed their habits is a simplistic approach to what’s wrong with things in Over-The-Rhine and fails to acknowledge that the problems we face are a systematic result of a whole lot of other things we’ve failed to acknowledge. We are all responsible. We are all needed to make things better.
The answers may feel unclear but it has to start with an understanding of “the other.” Antonio Reed has been addicted to one substance or another since he was a child. His story is about his trip through the inner-city and the penal system over the last three decades. What struck me most about his writing is his brutal honesty.
He doesn’t come off well in this story and he knows it. He doesn’t pretend to make excuses; he lays it out layer after layer. I’m not sure how I felt after reading this. I do know that it stuck with me for a very, very long time.
This month, we also feature some lighter-hearted political poetry. Besides writing political doggerel, William K. Woods is President of Applied Information Resources (AIR, Inc), a non-profit community research and public policy corporation in Cincinnati . In this capacity, he has conducted research projects for the National Civic League, the Kettering Foundation, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, the Wilder Foundation, and the Seasongood Foundation. He taught urban studies at Wilmington College and the University of Cincinnati , and his articles have appeared in the National Civic Review, Urban Resources, and Planning. In recent times, he has been involved with the Fair Elections Coalition locally and Common Cause at the state level in initiatives to bring about campaign finance reform. "Writing satirical poems," he says, "is good therapy during these rather bleak political times."
Links
• Click to read all entries “The Citizen”
• Click to read Antonio Reed “The Reasons I Used ”
• Click to read William K. Woods poetry Don't Believe the Truth
• Click to read more about Inktank
Contact Information
· citizen@queencityforum.com
· jsyroney@inktank.org
· Inktank |
