Inspiring a New Generation with Poetry
Gerald Richards and Jennifer Benka
[Gerald Richards is the CEO of 826 National. Jennifer Benka is the Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets.]
When Rashawnda started high school, she was disengaged. She couldn’t wait for the bell to ring at the end of each day, since all she wanted to do was hang out with her friends. In the middle of her sophomore year, a teacher suggested she attend an 826DC poetry workshop. She had never written a poem before, but once she did, she realized it was something special.
Rashawnda has grown into a talented young poet and her involvement in 826DC brought her new and exciting opportunities. A year after attending her first workshop, she read some of her work and was interviewed by 826 co-founder Dave Eggers at the National Book Festival. As she tells it:
“When I arrived at the tent, it was packed. There were people standing on the outskirts and people sitting on the grass. I had never read my writing to a crowd that large. I was excited, but my palms were sweaty and my stomach was doing flip-flops. I could feel my whole body shaking as I began to read. After a few deep breaths and a few stanzas, I had done it! While I was reading, I noticed a woman who was crying. Later she told my poem touched her. In that moment I realized I could connect with strangers and touch others with my writing. Me, a formerly nervous, awkward girl, could affect change.”
The world needs more people like Rashawnda. And connecting students to writers is an essential component of how we help students find their voice and, by extension, who they are. Everyone won’t be a writer in the national best-seller sense, but we need generations of young people to think creatively, understanding that revision is a fact of life, and that careers can be as different as we can dream them to be.
Inspiring students by connecting them with professional writers is at the heart of 826 National and its network. And we are proud supporters of the Academy of American Poets’ National Poetry Month, which has grown over the course of the past 18 years to engage more than 10 million Americans.
This year, many of 826’s nearly 30,000 students across the country will be participating in the Academy of American Poets’ Poet-to-Poet program. Part of National Poetry month, the program connects students with half a dozen renowned poets, including Poet Laureate of California Juan Felipe Herrera, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Edward Hirsch, NEA and Guggenheim Fellow Jane Hirshfield, Lannan Foundation Fellow Naomi Shihab Nye, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Ron Padgett, Jackson Poetry Prize-winner Arthur Sze, and Cofounder (with Allen Ginsberg) of the Naropa Institute Anne Waldman.
The program calls on students to be inspired by the poems they hear, draw on their own experiences, and create response poems that reflect their voice. For classroom teachers the Poet-to-Poet program has a Common Core curriculum and series of activities. Student response poems can be submitted to Poets.org for publication by April 30, which is a critical component for the 826 model of project-based learning. It isn’t enough that our students are writing more—they need to work toward seeing their name in print so that they can touch and feel their success.
It is this tangible outcome—a book, a video, a website—that builds confidence in students so that they continue to pursue their academic careers. Like Rashawnda, who loves attending college at Skidmore and is still writing.
