A Guest at the Writers' Club | Varsha Seshan's Official Website

I love inviting people to talk to my Writers’ Club – I think a new person brings a new kind of energy. With this being my fifth year with the Writers’ Club at St. Mary’s, I’ve started planning my sessions better, and involving previous batches each time we do something new and different.

Yesterday, I invited Samiksha Deshpande, an ex-Writers’ Club student, to talk to the girls. She was part of my very first Writers’ Club batch and wrote two stories for our sesquicentennial collection, Flickering Flames. More recently, her poem was one of the nine winners of the Book Trotters Club #SummerWriting2019 competition, which received 93 entries.

Transcription:
Early morning and boiled spinach? Has anyone got the appetite for this, eh? Unleash your aarghs and yucks with this poem by Samiksha Deshpande for BTC's #SummerWriting2019 contest!
Samiksha Deshpande, 16

Boiled Spinach
Boiled spinach is an insult to culinary affairs.
It’s gooey and green;
Its presence, vicious enough to scare an average teen.
They say it’s loaded with iron;
Honestly, do I look like I care?
I’d rather eat the nails that hold up the dartboard at the fair.
To make things better, you’re told about Popeye;
But let me assure you, there’s more to that;
Much more than what meets the eye.
For what’s the point of all the vitamins;
When your vital statistics are no bigger than heads of pins.
As a fact, you’re told boiled spinach cuts fat
Do me a favour, make it disappear, as simple as that.
A healthy diet is what you need, but there’s a rule:
Having boiled spinach, is not at all cool. — Samiksha’s poem “Boiled Spinach”

Samiksha chose to do a session on limericks. I love working with limericks, so I was delighted when she chose that as her topic!

I sat at the back of the class for a large part of the session, interfering only later to work with the girls on meter and rhythm. I loved Samiksha’s systematic approach, the amount of time she took explaining each section and the method she adopted to ensure that the girls understood what a limerick involves.

Audio-visual display that says 'Limericks'
A student standing before it, talking to a class of girls (no faces visible) — Samiksha working with limericks at the Writers’ Club

Older students working with younger ones is always lovely; I think everyone gains something from the experience. Last year, students from class X made big books for the prep school library, and I invited two of them to address the Writers’ Club.

A creative writing student from Lancaster did an activity with the girls last year (I wonder why I didn’t blog about that!), a NASA scientist spoke to them about science fiction, Ms Leela Gour Broome visited us … I love the number of new experiences I have thanks to the Writers’ Club!

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