AGES 15-17

Joselin has been working with Snow City Arts for a little more than two years, and in that time has created an impressive body of work. She has worked almost exclusively with Snow City Arts’ Creative Writing Teaching Artist Eric Elshtain.

Joselin’s first workshops were short ones: Joselin would read a poem, give it a thumb up or down, and that would be that. However, over the course of a few weeks, conversations began to get longer and more in-depth. During one workshop, Joselin read a Surrealist poem by André Breton and the flood gates opened. She responded to the openness of the language—the free associations and ability for the reader to find room for her own ideas in the poem.

In the midst of discussing Surrealism, Joselin became intrigued with aleatory techniques for composing poetry—meaning literally a throw of the dice, an “aleatory” procedure uses randomness to aid in the composition of a poem. Using a set of 100 random words, Joselin began to build poems by choosing words one-by-one, never knowing what word would be next. Building off these evocative, mysterious, image-filled poems Joselin began to explore different forms and techniques, growing more and more confident in her poetic voice. Everything you read here comes from Joselin’s fierce independence and intelligence.