By Masego Lynia
Culture! The collective programming of people! Isn’t that fun?
Conversation is how we communicate and connect, and in what better way can we do that if not by writing poetry?
Before you tell me, ‘not everyone can write poems’ let me be the one to tell you that anyone can write a poem, and cultural conversations proved that 6 weeks in a row. We played with simple words like food, home, and language etc. We had the privilege of hearing poems in Arabic, Spanish, French, Korean, Portuguese, Urdu and savoured the beautiful conversations that blossomed as a result of those poems. We learnt about the individual, their language, culture and surprise! Surprise! There was always something we all could relate to.
Facilitating cultural conversations meant holding and creating a safe space for different emotions writing can bring up. And having the joy of watching strangers go from awkwardly standing next to each other at the beginning of the session, to having full on conversations at the end. I saw friendships build up among the regulars, and the group developed a culture of its own. One that is fun, welcoming, supportive and safe, and I knew everyone felt they belonged.
One of my favourite things to witness was when they’d say to each other ‘See you next week’ at the end of the session.
