Writers Corps. Claim the Block from New America Media on Vimeo.
Check out this interview by YO! Youth Outlook with WritersCorps teaching artist Neelanjana Banerjee and her students. It was filmed at our Claim the Block reading at MoAD last Saturday, which featured our students from Ida B. Wells High School and Downtown High School. The students talk about their poems and why writing is important. Catch our next Claim the Block event at the Contemporary Jewish Museum on March 11.
Check out this beautiful book trailer for “By Heart: Poetry, Prison and Two Lives.” It’s a memoir written by our very own training coordinator, Judith Tannenbaum, and her student and friend Spoon Jackson, who is serving a life sentence in San Quentin. The book comes out this April.
Here’s what Gloria Steinem had to say about the book: “A boy with no one to listen becomes a man in prison for life and discovers his mind can be free. A woman enters prison to teach and becomes his first listener. And so begins a twenty-five year friendship between two gifted writers and poets. The result is ‘By Heart’ — a book that will anger you, give you hope, and break your heart.”
We can’t wait to read it!
Our friends at Youth Speaks are offering a variety of exciting winter writing workshops to East Bay youth under age 21 at multiple sites. You can take workshops on everything from developing your technique as an open mic performer to the art of storytelling. For more information on specific classes and dates, go here.
Celebrate this Friday, February 19, with the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, who will be holding a poetry reception and ceremony for the inauguration of San Francisco’s new Poet Laureate, Diane di Prima. The event also includes readings of works by past San Francisco Poet Laureates Janice Mirkitani, devorah major, and Jack Hirschman. Admission is free. For more information, go here.
A city-wide poetry contest is under way! Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and their Poet-in-Residence Jack Hirschman, together with the San Francisco Public Library are hosting a contest and reading series called Poets 11. They’ll be collecting poems from every neighborhood in each of San Francisco’s 11 districts.
Local poets are encouraged to submit up to three poems. Writings which reflect San Francisco’s diversity of language and culture and those written in languages other than English are highly encouraged. Selected poets will be presented with a $50 honorarium and their poems will be published in an anthology.
Submissions are due March 1, 2010. To find out how to submit, go here.
