chatting
DIANA ZWINAK
Executive Director of the
Teen Writers and Artists Project
How/when did you become involved with poetry slams and spoken word?
I guess I became involved with poetry slams and spoken word around 2008 or 2009 when a current student of mine, Qoc’a Revolorio, twisted my arm and insisted that I go with him to the Louder Than a Bomb finals at the Vic Theater in Chicago.
I was HOOKED. I loved how truthful and open and raw and TALENTED the teens on that stage were. I loved how dedicated the people surrounding those kids were. It was the same from the coaches all the way to the organizers of the event. It was a huge party for words and literacy and the Vic Theater was filled to overflowing. It was magic!
Qoc’a announced to me that we were going to put together a team to compete for his senior year. I couldn’t say no. I knew that I had to be involved at some level. So the next year we created our team, and it was grueling and exhausting and exhilarating and electrifying. I wrote a poem that year titled “Poetry if Going to Kill Me.” I can’t find the actual poem anymore, but I remember the sentiment. It was all about how this new world felt like home and was becoming a part of my blood, as were the teens on my team.
What prompted you to start Teen Writers and Artists Project?
The story returns to Qoc’a. He has been an instrumental influence on my life. When he was a freshman, it was my first year of teaching. He had been in school for a few weeks, and he walked up to me after class one day and said, “My mother said that I need to join a club, and I have decided that you are going to run it.” I was a little surprised and asked him what kind of club he thought this would be. He shrugged and said, “I like to write, It could be a creative writing club.”
So the next year at the annual Extracurricular Activities Fair we set up a table and a sign in sheet. I had 30 kids sign up! This is in a school with a student body of 300 students, most of whom are unwilling to turn in papers. And the stuff they showed up with …. There was so much talent in that little school.
So I began thinking about other schools and how it seemed like creativity based classes were being sacrificed to Core Curriculum and training for standardized tests. I thought if MY school had so many kids crying for a chance to express themselves, there had to be others. So I created what I intended to be a strictly online presence for young creative kids to connect with Adult mentors in their field in order to make themselves better at their chosen art.
We started with writing because that is the field that I know most about., having grown up convinced that I was a writer and wishing for certain types of support that were unavailable to me.
As the years have passed we have found more luck with our in person programming, which has kind of surprised me because everyone is so plugged in to the internet., but I guess what shows that artists really do crave
personal interaction and to see people’s response to their work.
What part of your work for Teen Writers and Artists Project comes the most naturally to you? Which stretches you?
For me, personally, the role that comes most naturally is seeing the need for the organization to provide programming or head in some direction and then gathering the folks together to do that. I believe that my enthusiasm for this kind of work and for breaking new ground is a real asset for me. If you want to know how exciting the kids we work with are, or how wonderful, talented, and dedicated my staff is, I will happily share that with you. And most people I have talked to seem to come away energized and happy to know about it.
Self-promotion stretches me. In my eyes, I am so much less important than the folks we serve. I really believe that every single teen walks through our doors just oozing talent. I’m just glad that we give them a place to discover precisely how talented they are and how valuable their voice is in this world. I am always floored when they tell me that I have some sort of impact on them and the routes they choose in their lives. Not a single one of them leaves me unchanged.
What draws you to working with teens and what are the challenges?
I suspect that I work with teens because I never really grew up. You know how sometimes you think “If I could go back to high school today, knowing what I do now… I still wouldn’t do it!” That’s me. Except that I did go back and I was lucky enough to meet some really terrific and talented teens, and I am lucky enough to be in a position where I sometimes become their confidant (but not their peer), their well-loved adult (but not their parent). And that is a very special role to hold. One of my close students from early on used to beg me to adopt her. She was mostly joking, but I would tell her that I didn’t WANT to adopt her because no matter how much I loved her, I didn’t want to be her mom because mothers are responsible for so many things like teaching people to clean their rooms, and making sure that they make it home by curfew. And that was not what she needed me for. She needed me to listen and admire and support her in ways that she would never let her mother simply BECAUSE her mother was responsible for the other stuff. I think somewhere within that story lies the reason that I like to work with teens so much. I am so lucky to have those kinds of relationships with so many young people.
Photography By Chuck Bennorth