New Poems on the Teens Behind Bars Blog
A couple new poems are posted on the "Teen Poems from Behind Bars" blog. Both poems are from the "Truth and Lies"Writing and YA Literature Workshop I presented in January. The first poem, "Choices" is written by a young lady who read Sue Silverman's powerful memoir, "Because I Remember, Terror, Father, I Remember You." After reading the memoir, this young lady came back to class the following day with her eyes bright. "My Mom didn't believe me either," She said, and then handed me her poem, "Choices."
The second poem, "Power" was written by a young man to his girlfriend. There is often a misconception that teen boys don't want to read or write love poems, however, I find the boys to be just as willing as the young ladies to express their emotion through poetry.
Here are the links to the two poems:
To read more about some of the YA books and memoirs that we used in the "Truth and Lies" workshop go here.
Also, on a very good note, we received notice that we got a grant for another workshop in May. But the best part of this story was the grant we applied for, we did not get it, however, a private donor in the community stepped forward and funded our request. These grants (usually in the amount of $500) allow me to work with the kids for a week's time on a daily basis. I've found that being able to meet with the kids every day for five days really allows us to dive into some great writing and reading discussion. The grants also allow us to buy 15-20 young adult and memoir books which go along with the theme of the workshop. The books remain at Denney School and are reused in subsequent workshops. I'm so thrilled to see our workshop book library grow, and to be able to bring these powerful memoirs and YA's to the teens as a part of the poetry workshop.
All the books we've used so far are listed here on the Denney Poetry Blog.
A special thank you to all of our workshop sponsors including: The Greater Everett Community Foundation, BECU School Grants, Tulalip Tribes, The Blanche Miller Artist Trust, The Everett School District Foundation.
