Karen Benke

karen@karenbenke.com
website:  http://www.karenbenke.com
Become a Fan on facebook: RIP THE PAGE! Adventures in Creative Writing by Karen

As a child, Karen Benke loved doodling the letters of the alphabet and hiding notes—under pillows, inside cereal bowls, taped to door knobs and mirrors—for her parents, grandparents, and friends to find while secretly spying as her words were discovered. Flash forward 30+ years and she’s still in love with arranging words on a page and surprising herself and others as a writing guide for kids (and kids-at-heart). The author of RIP THE PAGE! Adventures in Creative Writing (Shambhala, 2010) and Sister (Conflu:X Press, 2004), she’s been a California Poet in the Schools for 17 years while leading creative writing circles in after-school programs and retirement homes, for bookstores and arts centers, and even around her dining room table. She received her M.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco where she studied with Jane Hirshfield, and her B.A. in English / Creative Writing from California State University, Chico. Her poems have been published in anthologies and literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Poetry East, Rockhurst Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Heartlodge, Pilgrimage, Common Ground Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. A recipient of grants and residencies from the Marin Arts Council Fund For Artists, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi Resident Artists program, she lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge with her husband, Owen Prell, a screenwriter and arts attorney, their nine year-old son, and a cat named Clive. For more information on the creative writing workshops she leads, visit her website at: www.karenbenke.com

The Nothing

During Poetry, I sit next to the blue-hooded boy who tells me
he’s Just Matt. When I ask if he’s going to write,
he just looks at me, his face hard, pieces of dried grass clinging
to a dirty pant leg. He draws dark circles across the bottom half
of the paper in front of him. The Nothing, he calls it, explaining
there isn’t anything inside his imagination today: no dogs, no trees,
not even the storm that passed through his backyard the night before,
tipping over the trash cans his mom put out too early in the week,
the ones his dad yelled at her for while Matt stayed upstairs with his brother.
This morning his mom yelled at him. He was going to be late for school
and if she told him once she’d told him a hundred times:
she didn’t want to hear another word out of him. Nothing. You got that?

I’ll Tell You A Secret

Poems hide
& it’s our job to find them.
Look around.
Wherever you are—
at a park; in a car;
picking wildflowers
on the side of the road—
at home, cleaning your room,
or eating a slice of peach pie.
Don’t be shy. You’re alive.
Ask yourself what you most
need to find. Look up
into your own patch of sky.
Breathe in the lake, count
the bees as they hover
among the blossoming trees.
In the middle of the night,
rise from your bed
& walk through the quiet
of each painted room.
Outside, bend down. Rest
your palms on the moist ground.
Invite in the clouds,
the slivered moon. Listen
to your heartbeat if you can.
Are you brave enough?
Of course, you are.
Now pick up a pen
& write it all down.

Third Grade

When the class told the substitute
she’d worn the skirt with fading flowers
two days in a row, she told them

rice from her sister’s wedding
lined the pockets:
small-tipped pieces of sky,
the stars of last night falling.

During recess, all the girls
wanted to hold her hand—

And later, after the last bell,
a poem was perched on her desk:
folded into an origami swan,
asleep inside its feathers.

The Teacher Observes Trees
With the First Grade

Look, over there—
Is it a dogwood or a maple,
the teacher asks,
under the impression
she’s leading this discussion.

The branches look like legs
of a horse,
running into thunder—
A girl in front answers,
forgetting to raise her hand.

The teacher points to another,
showing off its deciduousness.
Someone in back explains:
It has a nice coat of wind and rain.

The teacher taps the windowpane
and asks whoever’s listening
to please locate their favorite.

All eyes turn to the hummingbird,
hovering at the fence.
Never mind the tree in full bloom.

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