Friday Feature: @seamlessjam

Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to introduce you to the subject of this week's Proser Showcase, James Samsel. His username, @seamlessjam is an anagram of his name.

Our recent interview with James, or "Jim," resulted in a detailed narrative which we have shared below for your reading pleasure.

I teach English and social studies grades 6 through 12 at a residential treatment center in San Antonio, Texas. Teaching is my third career. I have, at other times, been a builder and a musician.

My relationship with writing has been on-again off-again over the years. I messed with writing a bit in high school, writing poems and songs lyrics. My 30s were productive: I went to college as a nontraditional student, obtaining an English degree and participating in writing workshops. During this period I published a few poems and released an album of original songs with a band.

Then the off-again started up.

10 years ago, I entered an alternative teacher certification program, finding work at a charter school for at-risk kids doing credit recovery. I really didn't know anything about teaching reading and writing except that I like to do both, and set about collecting a bag of tricks to coax unwilling students into writing. In doing so, I tricked myself into writing again.

I collect visual prompts, surfing the Internet for images, memes and quotes that will engage my students. I use apps and websites like Storybird, Lark, Flocabulary and TeenInk to spark my students' creativity. We write 6-word memoirs, use "where I'm from" templates, and make found poems with magnet words on the dry-erase board.

Haiku and acrostic poems are accessible and fun. I have also found that hip-hop backing tracks and loops can inspire the even most reluctant boys to get their flow on. Demonstrating these gimmicks to my students got my own writing going again, even if at first it was just writing a daily haiku on the board.

Twitter is my best resource. I found Austin Kleon's Blackout Poems, Flocabulary and Prose on Twitter.

Following contemporary poets like Mary Karr, Natasha Trethewy and Richard Blanco lets me keep an ear to the ground. The great HW Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas in Austin, is tweeting the entire History of the United States-- in haiku. This is geekdom at its finest! Unfortunately, my favorite poet, Billy Collins, is only on Facebook.

I am currently and ploddingly working on a series of acrostic poems, cataloguing evocative names of places and native plants to conceal in acrostics. This is one of the tricks I use to get students off high-center with their creativity.

When I found Prose., or rather, when Prose. found me, I liked the idea, seeing the possibilities for feedback and community. On Twitter, there is some of that in the favoriting and following of micro-poets, but the "bot-ness" of AuthorBee and other entities is off-putting; it's certainly not the same as being read by a real person.

There was a bit of a learning curve with Prose. for me. I was frustrated that the app would not maintain my line breaks when I pasted text in from Notes on iPhone or iPad, but "typing" directly into Prose. works just fine and is a strangely tactile experience. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get characteristic of the app works well with my writing process, such as it is.

I walk nature trails and watershed linear parks in my hometown, San Antonio, and take pictures and notes for ideas, then write poems and journal entries in one sitting, with little revising.

My stuff exists in a particular moment and doesn't hold up through reiteration.

Be sure to follow Jim here and on Instagram @seamlessjam and on Twitter @tejastani.

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This #FridayFeature blog series is designed to help you get to know your fellow community members better. Would you like to nominate someone for interview? Have a question you’re dying to ask of someone on the platform? Send us a private message here or visit our contact page to get in touch: theprose.com/p/contact.