The Night of Reading 2022 and Advanced Creative Writing at Kantonsschule Wettingen
To wrap up this year of stories, poems and drafts yet to finish, the students of the Advanced Creative Writing course had the wonderful opportunity to get together for a laid-back night of reading our own texts and enjoying a snack. After a break of two years, on the 27th of April, our school’s lovely assembly hall (Aula) was once again open to friends, family, and to anyone with a knack for writing to come and listen to the fourteen Advanced Creative Writing students presenting their texts in this year’s Night of Reading.
With the help of our teacher and editor, Ms Sara D. Nyffenegger, we spent this year crafting our texts, sometimes – although very hesitantly – even sharing them with our peers. Events like this give many young writers the opportunity to present and perform what they have worked hard to create. Putting your thoughts into words can be a very personal thing, so, to many of us reading them out loud can be a very gratifying but also an exhilarating occasion. Especially with regards to the prompts of the Swiss Creative Writing Prize which we received for the 2022 competition. Starting in December up until the very beginning of April we put our heads down to brainstorm and come up with poems about identity and short stories based on the word offline. Each year the Advanced Creative Writing course at KWSE steps up to the challenge and submits many wonderful and successful texts to the competition.
This year’s audience had the pleasure to listen to prize winning stories and poems, such as the poems of last year’s winner, Imè Esenam (G3A). She not only won 1st prize for her poem Black coffee or To all the girls with hard to swallow names, but also claimed 2nd prize with To be black, to be woman. Jil Hug (G3C) got to read her short story Trapeze Act, which was short listed in 2021, as well as a new story, Radio Silence, with which she reached 3rd place in this year’s competition. The school also placed well in the poetry section this year, as Carole Meier took home the 2nd prize for her poem Nothing Left, and both Vrinda Arora (G2A) and Sulamith Tamborriello (G4A) were short-listed. The night was a success and after an hour of listening to different genres of writing, the evening came to a close with lively chatting and engaging discussions accompanied by a tasty apéro riche.
We were excited to welcome everyone back to our campus this year after the pandemic and are already looking forward and working towards getting to invite you again to next year’s Night of Reading.
(Text: Carole Meier, G2C / Photo: Sara Nyffenegger)
Black coffee or To all the girls with hard to swallow names by Imè Esenam
(1st place at the Swiss Creative Writing Prize Competition, Poetry, 2021)
To all the girls with hard to swallow names
The names we never find on water bottles and coffee cups,
The names people shake their heads at
The names that so quickly turn into a joke like they have no worth
The names they don’t even try to pronounce
And in exchange turn it to whatever they want
The names that go from Chimamanda to Mandy or Consuela to Ella
Like black coffee diluted with sugar and cream to Starbucks lattes,
So, they can bare to swallow it whole
The ones that get called complicated and dismissed
When asking to be called by their names that are gifts
And in return say sorry
The ones that now have apologies for names
Your name might not be a Starbucks latte, that teenage girls down so easily
But it’s black coffee, one so strong people shy away from it,
Never getting rewarded with its richness
Your name holds power in every drop
The very drops your ancestors prayed for
So don’t apologise for your name, when its meaning has saved so many before
Don’t dumb it down so it fits the shackless of society
It’s the only gift you’ll get without being expected to return the favour
Although you are much more than your name
It’s your crown so wear it with pride
Wear it high and don’t let anyone take away its shine
It’s not being complicated, it’s called having self-respect
So, if you didn’t offer it with sugar and cream, don’t accept it when they add their own
Or simply said ‘say it right or don’t say it at all’
Nothing Left by Carole Meier
(2nd place at the Swiss Creative Writing Prize Competition, Poetry, 2022)
Smaller and smaller was the goal.
To have Control.
No matter what toll it took on me,
I wanted to be pretty.
This idiotically simple thought
God, all it brought was pain
I never meant to change what’s on the inside,
To keep what made me Me,
Only to change what Others see.
Watch me get destroyed by this impossible task
I thought becoming popular could fill this void
But to bask in such glory just wasn’t for me
Childish dreams
So dumb and naïve
People ask who you are
But who are we to say how anyone should be
I thought I liked who I was, so why did no one agree
They’d never see the one I liked, truly, myself
I want this to stop
I want it to end
Shelf my needs, be strong now, pretend
Act as they do
Dress like they dress
Eat what they eat
No Extras
No Flaws
No Comments, just peace
So instead of wearing this face proudly as mine
I chose the path of least resistance, to hide.
A hollow mask I slipped behind,
But an empty stomach, an empty mind.
At first it filled me with pride, what I had made.
Discipline made me feel full ‘til it was too late.
So as the color of my skin started to fade
And counting and comparing took a hold,
As my world steadily went bleak and cold,
I realized what kind of person I’d become.
My emotions boiled down and my mind went numb.
What I used to love so much before,
Suddenly, none of it even mattered anymore.
It all went away
All out of my Control
Being low made me feel high
Piece by piece I replaced reason with a Lie
I’ve seen the statistics, I know I could die
But it’s just so hard to let go you know
It had so much patience, it started so slow
The Routine, it took root
And those tiny Restrictions still looked so cute
It’s simple, just a little bit less each time
And resign to my thoughts no longer being mine
Over time It even becomes less and less of a crime
For a long time now who i see is not me
As a child i had a clear Image of who i wanted to be
i Imagined this Person of divine Beauty and Grace
I don’t recognize this Face
What the mirror shows has changed
Closer to what i Wanted, but somewhat estranged
Deranged, Who i see is no longer me
Hollow cheeks
Hollow eyes
Hollow soul
The Hollowness took me,
It swallowed me whole
It ate me up, left nothing in my place
An empty Shell
and of me?
No longer a trace
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