photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Author and University of Kansas lecturer Brian Daldorph is pictured outside the DARE Center, 944 Kentucky St., on Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023. Daldorph will soon be teaching a free weekly writing class at the center open to all.

Starting this week, “poets, rappers, songwriters and dreamers” will all have a chance to grow as writers at Lawrence’s DARE Center for the Homeless under the direction of a longtime creative writing instructor.

It’s a new writing class, taught by author and lecturer Brian Daldorph, which aims to bring together both housed and unhoused members of the community to share their stories. The first class will take place Tuesday at 11 a.m. at the DARE (Drop In and Rest) Center at 944 Kentucky St., and it’ll continue on a weekly basis each Tuesday at the same time. It’s also free to attend, with coffee, water and writing materials provided.

Daldorph might be a familiar figure to some people in Lawrence because of his two decades of work providing a similar class to inmates at the Douglas County Jail. He kept that up weekly through the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but public health restrictions and a shortage of corrections staff forced the class to cease permanently.

Daldorph has taught literature and creative writing classes at the University of Kansas since 1990, but he calls his time teaching at the jail his “most important work.”

“It was great; I just worked with so many people,” Daldorph told the Journal-World Thursday. “I’ve always been interested in the significance of what I do, not just in the classroom but also in the way that people live their lives, and what we were doing at the jail was, I think, giving a lot of the guys there the opportunity to do something different and to write to tell their stories, to listen to what other people had to say, to sort of try to figure out who they are through their writing.”

If not for the pandemic, Daldorph said he’d still be teaching that class today. But the community work he’s taken on in the time since then helped to shape another opportunity for him to teach aspiring writers. For a few years, Daldorph has been volunteering at the City of Lawrence’s winter emergency shelter, and that’s how he connected with Loring Henderson.

Henderson, the founding director of the DARE Center, was someone Daldorph said he really wanted to work with. Daldorph began volunteering at the downtown drop-in center earlier this summer and, after showing Henderson his book that detailed his 20 years of classes at the jail, Henderson asked if he’d like to start something similar for DARE Center guests.

And so the new writing class was born. Daldorph said it’ll likely look a little different than some of the other classes he’s taught over the years, since those were facilitated in classroom settings. At the DARE Center, participants will grab a seat around the small table located in the front lobby area and can enjoy a cup of coffee while they work.

Henderson, for his part, is set to retire from his role with the DARE Center this month, so his work with Daldorph to nail down the details for the writing class will be one of the last actions he’ll take while leading the center.

It’ll be a relatively new venture for the center, which has for a while hosted a regular Bible study but otherwise not hosted many other similar activities. Henderson said it’s always been an aspiration to branch out in this way.

“It’s just a wonderful thing,” Henderson told the Journal-World. “I think it will stir folks. Like anything, it may take a while to catch on. Who knows? People will come and go, as they do through all things in homelessness and nature.”

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Daldorph said he especially wants to emphasize that his class at the DARE Center isn’t just for the homeless — it’s open to everyone.

“I’d really like to involve people in the community, too, not just the unhoused population,” Daldorph said. “… I think that this is just an opportunity that some of the people, they have their stories, and I think too often we just kind of walk by them when we see them downtown. I’ve gotten to know a number of people over the years from working with this community, and they’ve got their stories to tell, stories that I think we should all know about, really.”

Much like there won’t be any restrictions on who can come out and participate, there won’t be any limits to the type of writing participants can bring to the table, either. A flyer announcing the first class invites “poets, rappers, songwriters and dreamers” to come and express themselves however they see fit.

That’s in line with the structure of Daldorph’s class at the Douglas County Jail; he said while many participants were writing poetry, others were working on novels, short stories, songs and plays. It was at once both a writing class and a “creative space” — a setting Daldorph said he’s always aiming to foster.

That’s especially true of classes like this, he said, where people are “putting themselves on the line.” It’s important that they feel like they’re in a group that supports and respects them.

“I’m just interested in offering this space not just to write poems but to write what’s important for the people there to write,” Daldorph said. “… I think that, after all this time, I’m pretty good at creating a space where people can kind of do what they want to do in that space. We don’t judge people. I think I can create that atmosphere.”

As for what will make the class a success, it’ll partly have to do with how many participants it attracts — but especially, Daldorph said, that those participants want to be there and feel they have a purpose being there.

“Some of us have had a lot of education, and great, that’s really helped us. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never, in my experience, met somebody who didn’t have a language that they could use to tell their story — often in a very powerful way,” Daldorph said. “It’s great if you have an English degree, but it’s not necessary. If you’ve got important things to say, then you can find a way to say them; that’s what I’ve seen.”

People who are interested in finding out more about the writing class can contact Daldorph via email at briandal@ku.edu. For more information about the DARE Center, including donation and volunteer opportunities, visit the center’s website.