Gretna Wilkinson, creative writing teacher for the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts at Red Bank Regional High School, encourages students to pursue their passion for writing. PHOTO COURTESY OF RBR LITTLE SILVER — There is a story of a teacher who takes her students into the woods. It is dark and silent, save the light emanating from the lone torch she carries and the thoughts that chatter inside the students’ minds.
Thoughts like, “Where in the world are we going?”
As theywalk, the teacher points to various plants and roots, wildflowers and trees. At least the ones that can be seen by moonlight. She explains to them the purpose of their shapes and colors and continues down the path, one trusting step at a time.
All of a sudden the light goes out, swallowing everyone in engulfing blackness. A tiny scream emanates from the back of the pack.
“Are you leaving us in the dark?” a student asks.
“No,” says the teacher, smiling a smile no one can see. “I’m leaving you to find your own light.”
That is the story Gretna Wilkinson, creative writing teacher at Red Bank Regional High School, shares with her students every year. It is her favorite.
“To teach writing is to get them to enjoy all that is beautiful and passionate in the play of light and dark. And light is when you get your idea from deep inside you onto the page and dark is when you’re struggling to get it out, but knowing that you’ll get light at the end,” said Wilkinson in an interview on April 12.
“That certainty keeps you going, always striving for the light. And when you find the light for this one, you find yourself striving for fresh light for another piece because by the time you discovered one light, there’s a new one working its way through to the forefront.”
The creative writing program at the high school is competitive to get into and comprehensive once a student is accepted. Every year the number of students who apply is three times greater than the number of spots available .
To be accepted, students must submit a portfolio of work and then go to an audition that includes interviews and tests in reading.
“It’s their passion for it that works like fertilizer. It just grows on itself and they come in just ready to go. But the ability to write is not enough to get you in; the passion for writing is what we’re after,” said Wilkinson.
“Many students will show up to the auditions with the journals they are writing. They’re so anxious to share some of what they have written. Remember, these are young kids, so they don’t know what I’m looking for, so they go above and beyond, not so much out of a desire to one-up their competitors, it’s also a desire to share their passion.”
As a part of the high school’s Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, the creative writing program is considered to be a four-year major whose curriculum begins with incoming freshmen and ends with graduating seniors who will leave with a book of their work with a minimum of 88 pages.
Some of Wilkinson’s former students have gone on to become published authors, like Veronica Vay, author of “A Genetic Obsession.” Others have become writers of a different genre, such as scriptwriting for television’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Until then, students will hone their craft with Wilkinson, who is a published poet herself and a former college professor at the County College of Morris, where she taught English and creative writing for 17 years.
Reflecting on her own love for language, she said she didn’t know where it sprang from or what caused it.
“I just loved words from my earliest memory. I don’t know. When I was 3 years old, I’d carry a book under my arm long before I could read. A book and a pencil. Even before I could write, I would say I was writing even though they were just circles and shapes.”
Now in her seventh year teaching at RBR, she emphasizes the power of reading as a necessary tool to enhance one’s writing.
“You read to see how people handle ideas and imagery and how they manipulate the language to get a point across, and by moving into that, you hone your own skills,” she said.
“In the current freshman class I have 20 students. Each student discusses at least four books for the duration of the school year, so that’s two books per semester. That means that within the school year we’ve listened to 80 books. So they’re exposed to ideas constantly, always something fresh and new happening. Each student at the end of a school year will have encountered a minimum of 80 books.”
These books spur interesting discussions regarding plot structure, dominant scenes and characters. They even inspire students to creatively express a story’s scenes through sketches or drawings.
The only rule Wilkinson has is one she enforces every day: every class must have some laughter for any reason. She said it is essential for any real learning to happen.
During the month of April, which is National Poetry Month, students have been studying the rhymes and rhythms of various poems and will be reading at the Middletown Public Library later this month.
Students also participated in the Echoes program that featured senior creative writing majors recited their own original poetry. The Echoes program took place on Friday, April 20, at 7 p.m. in the RBR Commons.
Wilkinson said poetry is the most difficult genre to master and referred to African American poet Gwendolyn Brooks’ description of the art: “Poetry is life distilled.”
“But in some ways it’s the most succinct. It gets to the heart of the matter in ways that would take prose a long time to achieve— or any other format, for that matter. And think of religions, all the religions, whether the major ones or not, they’ve all turned to poetry to get the attention of human kind,” said Wilkinson.
“Poetry is in there because that gets to you in the deepest, most elemental way.”
According to Wilkinson, the word poetry means “a made thing,” and the simple act of creating embodies the birthplace of our stories, written or otherwise.
It reminds her of a kaleidoscope, that optical instrument whose insides are filled with mirrors that reflect the broken bits of beads and colored glass at the end of the tube. It makes magic with light, just like poems.
“There’s all of it in every dip of it, every word. Everything in the poem also has everything of the poem.”
Sit in one of the spaces between the busy
obligations of your life,
Listen as heart beat and deep lung-filling
breaths blend their rhythms to sustain a sweet
lullaby for your soul,
Feel your spirit buoyed by the hand of the
Merciful One; sit, listen, feel, hush
If you look; if you look; if you dare, look!
You will find yourself in the center of God’s
shadow
God was there all the time.
From “On Becoming Aware” by Dr. Gretna Wilkinson, “Opening the Drawer,” publisherCoolWomen Press, 2011; fifth book of poetry.