Michael Sargent says he tells stories in spite of who he is. Revealing stories about his history, hardships, longings, and fears isn’t his natural mode. In other words, Sargent isn’t who you’d imagine would create The Corner, a monthly community storytelling event in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine. And yet he did.

The story behind this starts with the community where Sargent, who is a psychology professor at Bates College, lives. Sargent started The Corner in 2013, in part because he was frustrated by the lack of world-class arts, culture, and entertainment in the area not specifically associated with Bates College. It wasn’t that Sargent didn’t like his students and colleagues; he just felt as if it would be healthy and good to have a place, unrelated to his work, where he could go and connect with others in the community.

Rather than just complain, Sargent did something. Since 2013, The Corner has been held at She Doesn’t Like Guthrie’s restaurant and cafe, a suitably non-corporate venue.

The Corner | Michael Sargent | Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Blogging, podcasts, stand-up comedy and the pervasiveness of Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media platforms have made the practice of self-revelation an almost compulsive habit for many. We share facets of our lives—snapshots, tidbits and details—all the time. But the kind of truth-telling and radical candor that Sargent has helped to encourage is different from all that.

Audience members are as likely to cry as they are to laugh. “You can tell that someone else has experienced something similar to what you have,” says Sargent. “It creates a great sense of connection.”

In a time of growing xenophobia, racism, and nativism in America, Sargent sees this connection-forging and community-building as a vital element of storytelling. Watching a total stranger get up to tell a story about having cancer or about coming undone by booze or overcoming crippling self-doubt makes a listener appreciate the bravery of anyone willing to participate, but it also jumpstarts a sense of empathy and compassion.

Storytelling events at The Corner do have rules. The “tellers” have to tell stories that are truthful, first-person narratives, recounted without notes and kept under five minutes. Events are organized around a theme. (April’s theme is “Fool’s Errand”—about doing something when we really shouldn’t have, for whatever reason.)

One of the innovations at The Corner is a sort of preliminary trial run where audience members are encouraged to swap ultra-brief stories with their neighbors where they’re seated. In some cases, this is enough to nudge introverts toward telling their story on the stage for the featured event, or to fine-tune and tweak for some future telling.

Sargent announced in May that he was handing over organizational and logistical duties for The Corner to Kathleen Juten, who has told her own stories there several times. Juten views the act of sharing and opening up to others as more than just a special form of art or entertainment. Before moving to Maine, she worked as a barista in California, where she found that artfully revealing parts of ourselves to each other is what fosters friendships and meaningful relationships, in addition to making mundane interactions more gratifying. “I found that the more open and honest I was with people, the more people reciprocated,” she says.

Civilization is, on some level, built on our ability to all go about our business without being overwhelmed by the depth of human feeling and history that each person carries around with them; if we were to always be fully aware of people’s stories, of what made them who they are—in good and bad ways—we might find it difficult to function smoothly. Storytelling is a small corrective to that. As Juten says, “It breaks down so many of these perceptions that we tend to have about each other.”

The Corner – hosts, Michael Sargent and Kathleen Juten
Auburn, Maine
Website
Facebook
Twitter

Top image Michael Sargent | Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

The post Storytelling Full Disclosure appeared first on Take Magazine.

Her passion and purpose extend far beyond her poetry, though. Williams is also a Professor of English and the Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Bates College.

You’ve made quite an impact at Bates College in the 3 years you’ve been on staff. Can you tell us more about the programs you’ve implemented?

Programmatically, we have created a series of distinctive interventions that seek to support, inform, and energize the community. Some of them include:

The Dinner Table program, which focuses on prompt-based storytelling as a means by which students increase measures of empathy, broaden their perspectives on what constitutes diversity and why diversity is a mutually held source of power and effectiveness, among other outcomes. Just two weeks ago, this year’s final storytelling event featured ten Dinner Table storytellers, nominated by their peers, on the main stage at our Olin Arts Center. Listening to stories that reflected an enormous range of experience – a Black woman’s move to wearing natural hair, a student’s struggle with suicide ideation, a Black man’s journey to shrugging off the stereotypes that once bound him, and a young man who nearly burnt his house down making nachos – reminds us all of our commonalities and distinctions, and how much we learn from and rely on each other.

Bobcat First!, a First Year, cohort-based program focused on supporting students who are first in their families to attend a four-year college, which actively involves first generation to college alumni and faculty and staff.

Lingua Franca, a student-driven, college-wide open forum meant to spark conversations across differences. Bates community members identify topics for discussion, and call on faculty and staff experts as well as a unique community circle model of small group discussion.

SPARQ!, our new multi-platform program supporting LGBTQIA+ identified community members and allies.

We are still in the early days. Each of these programs is new to the College, but to-date, the data we’ve collected suggests that they are helping us accomplish some of our primary goals, which include providing students, staff, and faculty with opportunities to build stronger, more inclusive communities, networks, feel more empowered, and more successfully engage a fundamental part of our mission statement, to engage, “the transformative power of our differences.”

You were recently commissioned by MoMA to write poems as part of the Jacob Lawrence Migration Series exhibit. What was that like?

Well, certainly, being involved in anything related to MoMA is a great honor. And I was particularly honored that Elizabeth Alexander, who I so admire, invited me into the project. But I was also thrilled to have been able to substantively engage with Leah Dickerman, who catalyzed this multi-disciplinary project. To be surrounded by so much brilliance and excellence is always a privilege. In this way, my inclusion in this project has seeded so much new thinking—oh, about poems, new forms, partnerships and potential projects. From one endeavor, I hope, will emerge many! So it has meant a reinvigoration of sorts, for which I am profoundly grateful.

You have published four collections of poems, that’s impressive. Out of these collections, a line that intrigued me was “The heart is a beautiful monster, it nearly always survives its fate.” Break this down for us…

I love that this line struck you as being of interest. That is, I think, the beauty of poetry—it asks us to slow down, ponder, turn language and meaning over in our heads and hearts. For this reason, I’m loath to answer the question because, ultimately, the line must mean something to the reader and that meaning may be quite different from my own.

That said, I think our “hearts” or spirits are our most robust qualities. They are from whence emerge our kindnesses and our travesties. So they can be both monstrous and beautiful and are often both—at once. This duality is what makes human beings, at least to me, so very interesting and compelling. And, in the context of the poem, the heart/spirit in this regard, can and will survive its fate, which was deep sorrow.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

Do you have anything new in the works right now?

In relation to my own writing, I have grown especially interested in work that employs multiple voices and multiple angles of vision that address the same topic and/or event. I am currently working on a book meant to be read as a memoir comprised of monologues interconnected by voice and topic and also performed as a play.

Having lived in Detroit, Madrid, Portland, and New York City—what’s most appealing to you about Lewiston?

What I most appreciate about Lewiston, and what reminds me most of my hometown, Detroit, is its working class nature, the people who live here who are making their way, their strong communities and traditions. These feel very familiar to me, even though I am not part of those communities and traditions. I appreciate its very “real” feeling, especially having lived for so long in Portland, Oregon, which could easily be characterized as a life-style city, resplendent with so many trappings of a world too few Americans experience and/or can afford. I like that Lewiston reflects and therefore reminds me of the millions of Americans living in cities and towns just like it—good people, hard-working people, people who want something more for their family and friends.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

The post Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor appeared first on Take Magazine.