Tamiko Beyer leads two workshops with NYWC, one at the Ali Forney Center, a drop-in center for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens, and another at Sylvia’s Place, an emergency night shelter for homeless LGBT teens at the Metropolitan Community Church in Manhattan. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and is the Publications Coordinator at Women Make Movies, the largest distributor of movies made by and about women. Her poetry has been published in Calyx, Crab Creek Review, Mizna, Gay and Lesbian Review, The Drunken Boat, and Triplopia, and other publications.

Hana Writes a Love Poem, by Tamiko Beyer
Interview with Tamiko Beyer

Additional links to Tamiko’s poetry and news about her readings can be found on her website, Wondering Home.

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Interview with Tamiko Beyer

When and how did writing enter your life?

I’ve always written. High school was when I really first started getting excited about poetry. I went to a really great public high school in Seattle and we had visiting poets come to our classrooms. For my senior project I wrote a series of poems in response to photos taken during WWII in the Japanese-American internment camps.

I noticed from looking at your website that you do a fair number of readings. Is reading aloud an important part of the writing process for you?

Yes. I try to read at least every month. There was a time I hesitated calling myself a poet because I was worried about irrelevance — about the marginalization of  poetry. I want to do work that is going to promote social change and I had a hard time reconciling that with spending a lot of time alone, writing, working on the craft of poetry. So the way I’ve tried to deal with that is to think very consciously about audience —about why I’m writing and who I want to reach with my writing. This includes submitting my work not only to mainstream literary journals, but also putting my stuff in zines, having a web presence, etc. Another part of this is that it’s important to me to connect to readers not only on the page but in person, speaking words aloud. For me it’s important to have both ways of getting my work out and heard.

What workshops have you facilitated through NYWC?

I lead two workshops. One at the Ali Forney Center, which is a day center for queer homeless youth. They have houses that the youth the can spend the night at, but [the homes] are all over New York, so they have the day center where youth go during the day. That’s where I lead a workshop. And the other one I lead is at Sylvia’s Place, which is a homeless shelter for queer youth and I actually do the workshop at the shelter itself.

I read the press release you posted on the NYWC listserve regarding the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s report on the homelessness epidemic amongst lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. Both the centers you facilitate workshops at—the Ali Forney Center and Sylvia’s Place—were cited as programs to be modeled after in this report. (Click here to read the report.) Can you tell us a little about how you think your writing workshops support the youth at these centers?

The youth who access these programs self-identify as LGBT, or queer – and they’re often there because they’ve been kicked out of their homes, or harassed, or assaulted, or all of these for being queer or transgender. They’re trying to figure out who they are and how to function in this society that in many ways doesn’t accept who there are. I think that they enjoy and keep coming back to the writing workshops because it’s a space that lets them explore these issues in a safe, creative way. For some of them, it might be one of the few times where they can express themselves as queer or as a youth of color in a completely supportive environment. I love writing with them, and I think they appreciate it when I read pieces that express my own queer identity – the whole positive role model thing… The NYWC model is so great in terms of getting people to connect with their stories and gain confidence in the strength of their voices. I really do see that in the workshops I lead.

One example of this is there was a youth, I’ll call her C. who had been coming for a couple of months to the AFC workshop, but wouldn’t write. I guessed she had literacy issues, so I just welcomed her every time, and encouraged her to write, but didn’t push her. One week there were four participants, including C. and they all had been coming for a while—which is very unusual in the workshops I lead—and they all knew me and each other. Because we were a small group and knew one another, I encouraged her a little more to write than I normally would have. For the first time all the other participants joined in the encouragement. She said something about knowing how to spell and I said it didn’t matter and the other participants agreed, and we convinced her to take a stab at the prompt I offered.

She wrote a page of really beautiful, brilliant work, and was eager to read it when she was done. It was amazing to hear her voice. It was such an intense piece, and it was just wonderful that she felt safe enough to finally take that risk. She was well rewarded with all the great feedback from the rest of the group.

Do you have a favorite writing exercise that you like to use in your workshops, one that really seems to stimulate writing and ideas?

I’ve only done this one twice, but with great results both times. I’ve printed postcards from PostSecret. [PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.]. I have the participants write in response to the postcard or about the story they imagine behind the secret.

Another one that’s worked well I got from one of the other NYWC workshop leaders. I brought in some progressive hip hop songs and had the kids pick out phrases they liked and wrote them on the white board. They wrote in response to the phrases and they came up with some amazing pieces.

What are some of your favorite books or who are some of your favorite writers?

Right now I’m obsessed with Kimiko Hahn’s, The Narrow Road To The Interior.  Some poets I go back to: Adrienne Rich, Joy Harjo, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Martin Espada.

A couple of years ago I was chosen to be a Fellow at the Kudiman Retreat for emerging Asian-American poets. Through that, I’ve met a lot of Asian-American poets in this area, and I feel really inspired by the people I’ve met through that organization – people like Sarah Gambito, Joseph Legaspi, and Pat Rosal who are writing really exciting stuff right now.