As a reminder, while at the Southampton Writers’ Conference, my class explored five different topics: coastal apathy, urban blight, income inequality, animal abuse, and intolerance. Each day, we wrote a piece inspired by the topic being discussed that day. Even though my pieces are not posted on this blog yet, this assignment was to explain how each of the pieces intersected with its respective topic. Here is the reflection:

Each piece that I wrote during my week at the Writers’ Conference in Southampton was inspired by the topic being discussed on that day that the piece was written. The first theme we discussed was coastal apathy: the doom and gloom of pollution on our waters. Even though our guest speaker focused on the positive side of things by talking about all the different amazing sea creatures that live in our water, my poem “The Weeping Ocean” was inspired by the doom and gloom.

My poem is essentially conveying that human pollution and disregard for our environment has contaminated our waters. Because of this, as I am walking deeper and deeper into the ocean, I can feel the pain it has suffered because of humanity and I feel as though it calls me to help it. Maybe the ocean wants me to take action against coastal apathy. Raise awareness. But would it be enough? There is also a sense of hopelessness which is because pollution along our coasts is so widespread that it may be too late to save the ocean. A single person such as myself can’t alone save the ocean. We must resist coastal apathy together for anything at all to change.

My second piece was a scary story that conveys a morbid overtone about urban blight. Abandoned buildings can be scary, especially at night. They are also great places for criminals to hide out and wait, such as the serial killer in my story “Hunted Down”. The only positive overtone is at the end of the story when the abandoned residence halls were restored and named after the victims of the massacre that night. My third piece relates to income inequality because it relates examples of some of the conditions and pressures that poor families are facing. In my piece, Billy’s family is so poor that they must siphon gas. My story also relates the ignorance of upper class families and the disregard they have for those less fortunate through the characterization of the Williamson family. The hardships of Billy’s family are intended to gain sympathy from the reader for such families and anger towards upper class families. Readers will be prompted to resist income inequality by being generous to those who are less fortunate, unlike the Williamsons in my story.

My fourth piece intersects with animal abuse, but a unique type of it. My piece “Something Scary” conveys not domestic animal abuse, but animal abuse happening out in the wild. This is not an uncommon thing. I’ve heard stories about people throwing frogs up in the air and throwing rocks at bats. The three boys in my story throw rocks at geese in the pond; a cruel act that is dramatized by the details that I included, such as one of the gooses swallowing ad choking on a rock. This is meant to get the readers angry at the animal abuse taking place. Then, the readers experience a catharsis as the boys are scared off by the owner of the wildlife refuge. In this sense, my story resists animal abuse.

My fifth piece was a poem entitled “Them”. This was inspired by intolerance. When it comes to intolerance based on these facets, there always seems to be a larger group of people (i.e. Ku Klux Klan) trying to suppress those of a certain race, ethnicity, religion, etc. In this poem, I categorize such groups as being “them.” I wrote this poem from the point of view of the people being suppressed by “them” to convey the fear that the people being suppressed might fear and to convey everything that is taken away from them due to intolerance. Thus, this poem is intended to get readers angry and resist intolerance.