Freelance Flashback: Dodge Festival at Waterloo Village

Until 1999, I had lived in northern New Jersey all my life. While there, I taught high school English. I was just one month into the first real work experience of my life when my supervisor asked me to chaperone a field trip. Another teacher's creative writing class was going to the Dodge Poetry Festival.

I'd been to the first in 1986 as a high school senior. (Some memories of that festival are in this post.) I had no idea that the festivals had continued, every other year, while I was in college and graduate school. After taking students to Dodge, I went to every festival. I called the Dodge office to volunteer and ended up with a paying summer job as a festival assistant, working at the event.

The big festival tent at Dodge's original location,
Waterloo Village. From The Star Ledger.

When we moved to Maryland, I recommended a friend for my Dodge position. I was sad to let it go. But soon, I was freelancing for the Baltimore Sun. I convinced an editor to let me cover the festival in 2002. Why should the Sun cover it? Because Lucille Clifton, who lived in Maryland, was a headliner.

Here is my 2002 article on the Dodge Poetry Festival, as it appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn

Every two years, poetry lovers quietly gather in New Jersey to celebrate the magic of words

Postcard: Poetry Central

September 29, 2002|| By Laura Shovan,Special to the Sun

After four hours of driving, I turn off the highway into the Skylands region of northern New Jersey. The two-lane road is wooded. Breaks in the trees offer glimpses of unfarmed fields and quiet ponds. At 6 p.m., the parking lot of Historic Waterloo Village is still crowded.

The last of several school groups are loading teen-agers onto buses. Though they've been here since early this morning, students from the Milwaukee High School of the Arts in Wisconsin are debating about who gets to stay for the evening concert. The kids are exhausted, but want to see and hear more. Their enthusiasm is not for pop artists or even classical musicians. At this event, the main attraction is poetry; the stars are poets.

This historic New Jersey village is home to the biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, a four-day event billed as the largest poetry festival in North America.

One of the beautiful scenes at Waterloo Village, from
New Jersey Leisure Guide.

Students, teachers and the general public -- a crowd 15,000 strong -- come here every other year not only to enjoy the spoken word, but also to meet and chat with poets famous and unknown. It's not unusual to bump into old friends. Such reunions give the event a homey atmosphere, despite the large crowds.

The first two days, while open to the general public, are designated for students and teachers. Over 6,500 of them are attending free of charge. The tab is picked up by the Geraldine R. (as in Rockefeller) Dodge Foundation. The foundation is known for its generosity to the arts, particularly in New Jersey, where festival director Jim Haba also spearheads a poetry outreach program in the schools.

It is a short walk from the parking lot to the village entrance, but passing through a tunnel of trees and emerging out of sight of the cars is like entering a world apart. Waterloo's restored historic buildings and centuries-old canal intermingle with tents, large and small, where the poets read.

The enormous concert tent houses the evening events. Poets Marie Howe, Marilyn Nelson, Gerald Stern and Lucille Clifton each read for half an hour. Each "set" is punctuated by live music.

Clifton, a Maryland resident and one-time state poet laureate, has been a "Featured Poet" at every festival but the first, in 1986. She says the festival draws so many people "because poetry speaks to something in us that so wants to be filled. It speaks to the great hunger of the soul. ... I think that this [event] feeds that."

Clifton reading at the Dodge Festival.

More than 65 poets would participate this year. Top billing went to the five U.S. poets laureate from 1993 to present: Rita Dove, Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Stanley Kunitz and Billy Collins, whose term ends next year. It's also a festival tradition to include international poets. Palestinian Taha Muhammad Ali and Adam Zagajewski of Poland were among this year's featured poets.

Community in poetry

Despite the all-star lineup, Haba says, this is not a gathering of the poetry "in crowd." JC Todd, a poet and translator, said, "When you come to the Dodge, you see those barriers are completely permeable." The poets become real people. Poetry becomes something that everyone can participate in -- a community event.

In the first morning session, Ali is reading with his translator in a small tent near a willow-lined stream. Ali is charming and grandfatherly, with a deep, gravelly voice. It's a wonder to hear him read his poems in Arabic and then watch him as translator Peter Cole reads in English. He plays the role of conductor -- gesturing, smiling and nodding the poem along. [BTW -- This is one of my all-time favorite Dodge Festival moments, Taha Ali reading his poem, "Revenge."]

Between sessions, attendees are serenaded by Yarina, a group of musicians from Ecuador. A festival mainstay, these brothers play traditional Andean music on panpipe, guitar and drum, literally dancing around Waterloo Village.

The job of nurturing the event's celebratory atmosphere -- music, location, even the carefully chosen concessions -- belongs to Haba. "This is really a whole person experience," Haba said. "What the festival has the luxury of doing is imagining the whole person and trying to provide for it." Attention is even paid to how often the bathrooms are cleaned. He wants people to remember the poetry, not bland food or dirty toilets.

At lunch, poetry lovers choose from among a dozen food stands. At picnic tables near a waterfall, they discuss the poetry heard that morning.

Michael Murphy, who teaches at an urban New Jersey middle school, finds the setting idyllic.

"It's very hard to find silence anywhere [in daily life] and the setting, of course, is perfect for augmenting that. There is space for quiet conversations. You lean on a tree, you listen to the wind and you go back and you listen to a poet."

This church was one of the reading venues.

Veterans of the event often have great festival stories. Margaret Valentine, a New Jersey high school teacher, describes walking with poet W.S. Merwin at the 2000 festival. Just as he signed her book, she says, "Behind us there was this hole in the ground where these baby turtles about walnut size started coming out of the ground." The newly hatched turtles were rescued and brought to the pond.
 

Valentine points out that those who rush around trying to see everything miss the heart of the festival. It is better, she says, "letting the whole place happen to you. It's kind of a gluttony of words. It's just such a wonderful, freeing experience." And moments shared between poets and poetry lovers are part of what makes the Dodge festival unique.

Erma Terrezza, serving lunch at one of the food stands, Big Joe's Deep Fried Turkeys, has found herself caught up in the spirit of the event. "The atmosphere is beautiful," she said. "I was just amazed that everyone comes from all over and they're so excited." Terrezza says she plans to take time off from her turkey to hear Billy Collins read. And she will return to the next festival, she says, whether or not Big Joe's is back.

Some insider notes:

2002 was probably the most scandalous of the Dodge festivals. Headliner Amiri Baraka read a poem that got him booted from his post as New Jersey poet laureate. The state has not had a poet laureate since. (A brief article about the controversy.)

Jim Haba retired before the 2010 festival. Poet Martin Farawell became the director of Dodge's Poetry Program. When Waterloo Village closed under dubious circumstances, several cities bid to host the poetry festival. It made its urban debut, in Newark, NJ in 2010 and was held there again this October. 

You may recognize this Dodge venue from TV --
it's used for America's Got Talent.

Thanks to several of my friends who have cameos in this article: poets and educators JC Todd, Michael Z Murphy and Margaret Valentine.

Also, thanks to poet Irene Latham who, unanimously and all by herself, voted for this piece as the next Freelance Flashback.

If you'd like to vote on the next Freelance Flashback post, leave a comment. The choices are:

• Elementary School Handbell Choir
• Student Chess Tournament
• University of Maryland's Working Farm

Poetry Friday: When Did You Fall in Love?

When did you fall in love with poetry?

I once heard Jimmy Santiago Baca read. He discovered poetry in jail. He was learning to read, found poetry, and became a poet himself.

My friend, the poet Svea Barrett, says that poetry saved her during a difficult time in her life.

I fell in love on the floor of my brother's bedroom, on a sunny day in the late 1970s. My youngest brother was an infant and I was eight. Was he sleeping or playing quietly? Maybe he wasn't in the room at all. A copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses sat in my lap.

We had plenty of books. I was familiar with nursery rhymes and books like The Big Orange Splot and Fortunately were family favorites. We also loved the Mr. Men series, which we'd brought back from trips to my mother's native England (you couldn't get them in the U.S. back then).

I loved books, but this was different. On this day, I had an experience. Like an epiphany.

This illustration looks vaguely familiar.

The Swing

By Robert Louis Stevenson

 

How do you like to go up in a swing,

   Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

   Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

   Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

   Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

   Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

   Up in the air and down!

 

The weird thing was, I knew that place. My grandparents had a big house on the outskirts of a small Nottinghamshire village. We visited once a year. I had "my own" bedroom in their house. And from that bedroom's high window, I could literally look "over the wall,/ Till I can see so wide,/ Rivers and trees and cattle and all/ Over the countryside."

I remember, I couldn't stop staring at the picture in my book. That someone could describe this place that was special to me. In that moment, I was in our house in New Jersey, but I could see the landscape of far away England. I read the words again and felt the swinging motion in the rhythm. I could picture myself on that swing, high up, looking at the farms and fields surrounding my grandparents' house. I could picture myself coming down -- the brown brick of the house, my grandmother's rock garden beyond the kitchen window.

I think that I have loved poetry ever since. My next big crush was Edgar Allan Poe. Then William Carlos Williams. All along, I kept writing.

A high school field trip to the first Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival sealed the deal. There, I was introduced to modern poets like Sonia Sanchez. The first poet I heard on that trip was Galway Kinnell, reading in a small church. The early light shone on him as he read -- I felt transported.

I love sharing poetry with children. I never know which poem is going to spark a light in which kid. (My daughter is partial to Calef Brown, particularly his poem "Olf," about a terrible -- as in not very good at his job -- pirate.)

What about you? Do you remember your first poetry epiphany, when the art form grabbed your heart and wouldn't let go?

Poetry makes me feel like this guy.

Today's Poetry Friday host is Sylvia at Poetry for Children. Stop by for more poetic epiphanies. 

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets: Honey Novick on Ars Poetica

Many poets have an "ars poetica." The term refers to a self-reflective poem, in which the author uses poetic form to examine or define the nature of poetry.

For instance, Archibald MacLeish's poem, "Ars Poetica," concludes with the oft-quoted lines:

A poem should not mean

But be.

You can read the whole poem at The Academy of American Poets.

Writing an ars poetica is a useful exercise and I am fascinated with the variety of voices these poems produce. Another one of my favorites is "How Poetry Comes to Me" by Gary Snyder. Jane Hirschfield has a poem (wish I could remember the title!) about a nameless woman in another country, sitting down to write a poem.

Here is Ontario poet Honey Novick, with her ars poetica.

WHY I WRITE

by Honey Novick

(Inspired by my friend Lillian Allen)

As I age, writing connects my present to my future.
Placing pen to paper, I seek
all thoughts, experiences, expectations.
When vocalizing with others,
I ask them to tell me a story about their names,
that story is vocal expression.
Writing expresses a voice, my voice.

When I tell you that I love maple syrup,
I’m telling you more than a simple statement of fact,
more than a prosaic like or dislike,

I’m telling you that the historical, majestic maple tree
loses its foliage every autumn,
yet inside that defoliated maple tree entities are alive.
Those entities endure the harshness of winter
and when least expected but most needed,
they form little buds on the branch
an omen of hope
signalling that soon the time will come to drill a hole
into the bark of the tree,
or tap an existing spout,
awaiting the flow
of the warmest, tastiest, life-affirming sap
one can ever imagine tasting.

That is why I write.
I tell you who I am,
why I like what I like
what things mean to me.

Through writing I can share something with you.
Even if you don’t write, you can share something with me.
What you value, what you see,
What is it that makes you happy?

Do you love to dance,
take a chance,
do you think life is just happenstance?

Do you value independence,
or people telling you what to do,
letting someone else make up your mind for you?

Is your opinion important?
Do you want to be heard?

Having dialogue
is more that the noise of sounds chirred.

This why I write,
conversation, connection
daring to go beyond personal introspection.

Have you written an ars poetica? If so, did you set out to write one? I once read my poem "Driving Home from the Poetry Festival, 1996" at an event.  I was surprised when a poet came up to me and said it was an ars poetica. So maybe, like me,  you have written a poem about the act of writing poetry and didn't realize it.

My poem refers to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, which takes place every other year in New Jersey. It's happening again in October!

Poetry Friday: Rachel Hadas & Poetic Form

Happy Poetry Friday!

One of the poets I went to see at the Dodge Poetry Festival earlier this month was Rachel Hadas. She is called a neo-formalist. During the craft-talk, Hadas had some interesting things to say about the value of form in modern poetry.

I loved this one (aimed at classrooms, I'm sure): don't encourage students to discuss what "the poet was trying to say." He or she has said it.

Hadas said that we can't know a poet's intentions. It's probably better to talk about what the poem is doing and how -- the tools the poet uses that allow us to read a poem and say, "This is how the poem feels to me. This is what it means to me."


She used this wonderful simile: poetry is like a blank check. The reader fills in his own connections to some extent. Hadas' well known poem "The Red Hat" is a great example of this idea.

After reading this poem to us, Hadas said the experience described in "The Red Hat" "is something that every parent and child negotiate all over the world."

The Red Hat

by Rachel Hadas

It started before Christmas. Now our son
officially walks to school alone.
Semi-alone, it's accurate to say;
I or his father track him on the way.
He walks up on the east side of West End,
we on the west side. Glances can extend
(and do) across the street; not eye contact.
Already ties are feeling and not fact.
Straus Park is where these parallel paths part;
he goes alone from there. The watcher's heart
stretches, elastic in its love and fear,
toward him as we see him disappear ...

You can view the entire poem, read by both Laurie Wessely and Roy Bumiller for National Poetry Month, on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJmNWeFBSQ

As Hadas pointed out, even poems that are rooted in specific experience will "float free" of their occasion and speak to a larger truth.

Have a wonderful Poetry Friday. In Maryland, we're putting on our red (and purple and blue) hats. It's getting cold! Andi at A Wrung Sponge is on poetry-post round-up duty today. Check out her blog for more poems.

Contests and Markets for Young Writers

It's time for me to update my list of contests and markets for young writers.

I keep a hand-out for teachers, parents and students, who ask, "Where can my child send her writing?"

We could debate the usefulness of pushing children to publish, but I don't have a problem with students sending out their own work. In education, this is what's called an authentic audience -- writing that's not for school and grades, but has a purpose in the real world.

Please let me know if you come across any contests or publishing opportunities for those age 18 and under.

Here's a high school writing contest I learned about at the Dodge Poetry Festival:

Here's the link, if you want to read the small print. Rider University is in New Jersey, but the contest seems to be open to all high school students.

Good luck to your children and students!

Poetry Friday: Dodge Festival

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan has totally won me over.

Last weekend, I heard Ryan's talk on craft during the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. One of my buddies called Ryan, "charming." And she was -- genuinely pleased when someone asked her to read a poem that she herself enjoys.

She was also insightful about the writing process. Ryan compared her use of sound to a certain teething toy -- one that my daughter loved as a baby. It looks like a molecule, with wooden beads that slide along taut elastic strings, connected by wooden rods.

Ryan said she listens for sounds that are bonded to other sounds. The near-rhymes in her poems keep words connected, but also makes a poem feel, "bouncy and wonderful."

Ryan said that using narrow poetic lines helps those sounds bounce around. Because the first and last word of any poetic line have maximum exposure, Ryan'sskinny poems can feel, "almost all exposed." Interesting thought.

One of my favorite poems from the reading was, "He Lit a Fire with Icicles." It describes one of the miracles of St. Sebolt.

Your writing prompt for this week -- pick a saint. Your favorite saint, your birthday saint, or a saint who shares your name. Write a poem about one of your saint's miracles or his/her death. Saint Laura was scalded to death in a vat of lead. Ugh.

He Lit a Fire with Icicles

by Kay Ryan

For W.G. Sebald, 1944-2001

This was the work

of St. Sebolt, one

of his miracles:

he lit a fire with

icicles. He struck

them like a steel

to flint, did St.

Sebolt. It

makes sense

only at a certain

body heat. How

cold he had

to get to learn

that ice would

burn.

Read the rest of the poem here.

During the reading, Ryan said that she sat with this poem for a long time. She got stuck on the idea, "he had to ... learn that ice would burn." The poem didn't resolve for her until it found its feet -- an unexpected, but inevitable, and lovingly human, resolution.

Enjoy the rest of your Poetry Friday! You'll find more poetry posts at Liz Scanlon's blog, Liz in Ink.

Poetry Friday: Dodge Festival

This Poetry Friday, I'm driving up to the 13th Biennial Dodge Poetry Festival. It's my tenth visit to the event.

I attended the very first Dodge Festival in 1996, as a high school senior. Galway Kinnell reading in a church-- the early morning light and early fall cold -- filled me up. I also heard Sonia Sanchez read and wore a black cape like hers for months afterwards.

Even though the festival is changing venues -- moving from rural northwestern NJ to the city of Newark -- some things are not changing. The Dodge program continues to invite nationally recognized voices like Billy Collins and Kay Ryan, as well as international poets who are less familiar to American readers.

Dodge has introduced me to poets Taha Muhammad Ali and Ko Un. I love hearing the poets read in their native tongue, followed by the translation in English.

My goal today and tomorrow is to go hear poets who are new to me. On my must-see list is Iraqi-American poet Dunya Mikhail. Here is her poem, "The War Works Hard," a powerfully ironic ode to war.

The War Works Hard

by Dunya Mikhail
translated by Elizabeth Winslow


How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places
swings corpses through the air
rolls stretchers to the wounded
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins...
Some are lifeless and glistening
others are pale and still throbbing...
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky

Read the rest of the poem at The Academy of American Poets. Or you can listen to Mikhail read the poem in English at NPR.

Dodge is going to livestream some of the events. Visit their website to find out how to attend the festival from home!

Thanks to Carol at Carol's Corner for hosting the Poetry Friday round up today. Wander over there for more poetry posts. I apologize in advance for not visiting and commenting today -- but I'll make it up to you with some Dodge-related posts when I return.

Blessing the Boats

Late last night, the local poetry community started spreading the sad news that poet Lucille Clifton died yesterday morning.

She was a resident of Howard County, Maryland, where I live. Clifton was beloved for her active support of local poets and literary groups.

Lucille Clifton's poetry had a raw honesty. When she spoke to an audience, you knew right away that the honesty of her poems equalled great personal bravery.

I was lucky enough to interview Clifton for a Baltimore Sun article about the 2002 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, where she was a featured poet.
She said, "Poetry speaks to something in us that so wants to be filled. It speaks to the great hunger of the soul and I define soul in a broad way.”

When I asked her about her popularity with Dodge attendees (Clifton appeared at every festival but the first, 1986), she said, "I do seem to have an audience that cares about me...I don’t quite know why. I’d like to think it’s because what I write about is about being human. . . I invite humans to join me there in that place where we are human.”

I am celebrating the life and work of Lucille Clifton with her poem,"Blessing the Boats."

blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss

the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back

Read the rest at the Poetry Foundation.

Children's writers who follow this blog might  know that Lucille Clifton was also an author for children. In addition to her National Book Award and being a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for her poetry, Clifton's picture book, Everett Anderson's Goodbye is a Coretta Scott King award-winner. The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring is a favorite at our house.
 
May the tide that she is entering even now love her

Poetry Friday: Remembering Jack Wiler

New Jersey poet Jack Wiler died last month.

I knew him slightly through the Dodge Foundation's Poetry Program, and heard him read at one of their festivals.

He was edgy, with his cool exterminator's t-shirt. And real -- the t-shirt doubled as advertisement for Jack's day job. His poetry found the music in every day people working and living their lives. No ivory tower here.

Here is a poem by Jack Wiler:

Love Poem at the Beginning of Summer

This is a love poem about empty places.

About blank walls.

About light in the night and noises on the street.

This is a love poem where no one is there.

This is a love poem for you.

This is your house.

This is the light you make.

The soft light of a summer night.

The noises from the bars down the block.

The girls screaming at their lovers.

Your clothes spread across the bed.

You spread across the bed.

The sun in the afternoon. Too hot sometimes to bear.

The smell of your skin.

You mixed carrots and soda for tanning cream.

That taste is in this poem.

This is a love poem without you in it.

Like every love poem should be.

Read the rest here.

I love the insistence of "This is a love poem without you in it./ Like every love poem should be." A true love poem can't capture its object. The beloved has to live and breathe in the spaces between the words, where language can't go.

I'm thankful for poets like Jack Wiler, the non-MFAs who all of us meet in our regular day -- exterminators and public school teachers and dry cleaners. I'm sad that we've lost one of those voices in Jack.

Today's Poetry Friday round up is at the Drift Record.

Poetry Outreach in New Jersey

Poet Khalil Murrell is Poetry-in-the-Schools Assistant for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, which puts on the fabulous biennial poetry festival in northern NJ.

As part of his position at Dodge, Khalil does outreach to New Jersey's neediest school districts. Here is the final part of our interview.

KM: The Dodge Poetry Program’s interest in doing outreach in under served communities in urban and rural areas is simply to make our student and teacher-centered programs reflect the actual demographics here in the state [of NJ]. We have been curious as to how we can get the word out to students and teachers in such cities as Camden, Elizabeth, Paterson, and Vineland. Last year, we began meeting with Department Chairs in Newark to inform them of these programs and surveying teachers about how we may best reach other faculty members in their school and district. As a result of our outreach, we registered for Student Day a record number of high school students and high schools overall in Camden, my hometown. [Non-New Jerseyans, the city of Camden has been struggling for decades -- since its major manufacturer, Campbell’s Soup, left the area. The city was also Walt Whitman's last home. Whitman is pictured, left.] I have also received feedback from friends, poets reading at the Festival, and Festival attendees hugely applauding the growing diversity of the line-up, both in terms of cultural background and artistic style. AA: What’s your best “behind the scenes” Dodge Festival story?

KM: I try never to “geek out” over celebrities or famous poets. I was in line for lunch, chatting with a friend, when Robert Hass walked up behind us and joined the conversation, perfectly down to earth and kind, as he always is. He said, “Hi, I’m Bob.” I opened my mouth to speak but for 3 or 4 seconds nothing came out, and he’s looking at me, bright-eyed and smiling, until I finally retrieved my voice box to say, “Uh…uh…I know who you are. You’re Robert Hass.” (I’m guessing he’s probably known that for some years now.) He chuckled a little and patted me on the back. Afterwards, I was so embarrassed. AA: Which poets made an impression on you at this year’s festival? What did you like about their work?

KM: I loved how poets and poems spoke to each other throughout the 4 days. A great complement to Sharon Olds’s “Ode to Douche Bag” was Kevin Young’s great reading of “Ode to Pork” on Saturday night. It was a magical moment when he said, “Babe,” and the crowd took a second to catch the movie reference before laughing and applauding loudly. Having suggested we invite him to Festival, I was also looking forward to seeing Chris Abani. For me, Chris was the star in Stanhope, if there was one. He was so generous in conversation, so brilliant, yet humble, and so likable. He offered such fresh perspectives to the conversations and his readings were impressive.

AA: Chris Abani was a star. Great reader, personable. Even though some of his poems dealt with difficult subjects, Abani's humor and optimism drew in the audience.

Thanks for your insights, Khalil!

I wish I had time to share more about the festival. Never did get to my critique of the Borders Book Tent. Never told you about Robert Hass comparing being U.S. Poet Laureate to Monty Python's Encyclopedia Salesman sketch ("Can I interest you in a nice sestina?" Watch the original sketch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsvWVbBowXo ) But, it's time to stop dragging my heels and move on.

Hope to see you at the 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival, y'all.

It's Poetry Friday!

It’s been three weeks since the Dodge Poetry Festival. But I’m not ready to leave the spirit of the festival behind yet. Here’s one last interview.

Today and tomorrow, we’re visiting with Khalil Murrell, Poetry-in-the-Schools Assistant at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s Poetry Program. Khalil is a former high school teacher, now in his second year at Sarah Lawrence College’s well-respected creative writing program.

Khalil works on outreach – bringing Dodge’s poetry programs to struggling school districts in New Jersey, where the Foundation is based.

AA: Khalil, how did you become involved with the Dodge Poetry Program?

KM: Years ago, I taught secondary English in Philadelphia, during which time my colleague asked me to help bring a group of students from our school to the 2004 Dodge Poetry Festival. Needless to say, it was the muddiest experience I have ever had!

(Photo: Khalil Murrell, left. Poetry Assistant Michael Z Murphy, right.)

But it was not only great to see so many prominent names – i.e., Sandra Cisneros and Lucille Clifton -- but also poets whom I had recently seen on Def Poetry Jam, such as Marty McConnell and Roger Bonair Agard. And our students enjoyed themselves immensely, even helped to push our bus out of the muddy ditches. [One of the parking areas at the 2004 festival was called "Mud Lake." It lived up to its name.]

AA: What is it like working for the Poetry Program?

KB: Working here [at the Dodge Foundation] has surrounded me with writers in a way I never imagined. The camaraderie itself has affected my work and my drive to write. There are also tons of books of poetry all over our office, so I have access to a huge library and I’m reading poets now that I would not have considered otherwise.

AA: Readers, I was a festival assistant in 1996 and 1998. Working with festival organizer Jim Haba (left) was surreal. It looked and felt like a typical office most of the time, but one minute you’d be doing data entry and the next Jim Haba would be saying something profound and poetic. What a great job!

Khalil, can you describe the festival’s Student Day?

KB: At full capacity, the Concert Tent holds a little under 2,000 seats, and to see it filled with over a thousand young faces hungry for poetry makes you speechless.

We all hear stories about the non-attentiveness encouraged by our quick-paced society. So many poets ran up to me joyous about the striking and prolonged connections they had made with students during their Poets on Poetry sessions or in their individual readings.

Tomorrow, Khalil tells us how Dodge is reaching out to New Jersey's big city schools in need.

Visit Becky's Book Reviews for more Poetry Friday offerings: http://blbooks.blogspot.com/2008/10/poetry-friday-round-up.html