Dear Friends,
It's hard to believe that this year's gala marks our 15th year here at InsideOut. Over the years, we've held our annual publication celebrations at a range of venues throughout the city of Detroit, including the Roostertail, the Gem Theater, the SereNgeti Ballroom, among a number of other sites, though no matter where the party is it is always a festive culmination of our year's work, a delicious feast of words.
This year's roaming event, driven by the theme "When Poetry Comes to Town," was truly that: a "moveable feast" that began early in the afternoon at the Detroit Children's Museum (for our K through 8th grade students) and later migrated over to Wayne State's McGregor Memorial Conference Center (for the evening's gathering of high school writers). In his poem, "Eating Poetry," Mark Strand declares, "Ink runs from the corners of my mouth./ There is no happiness like mine./ I have been eating poetry." I often, jokingly, tell students, "Poetry is good food. Just like soup." Poetry at this year's gala was a seven-course meal. Poems about the beauty of backyard alleyways and the twirling, turbulent sea of a Van Gogh painting gave way to poems about guitars and eye-glasses along with a deeply personal exploration (our Lotus Press Award winning poem) of what it means to grow up young and female and Arabic in a world complicated by gender, region, and race relations.
Breathtakingly beautiful poems. Bravely dangerous poems. Poetry retrieved from the heart and then aimed at the heart of us lucky to be near enough to hear it/eat it. That's what InsideOut is all about. Getting students to dig, to reach, go deeper.
To put words to what, for most of the world, remains unsaid. Let me be among the first to say thank you, young poets, for feeding our hungry bellies. And thank you, too, to those of you who, over these past 15 years – or even if this is your first year as a friend of InsideOut – for staying with us on a journey that we hope will continue to grow and deepen and last.
Peter Markus
Senior Writer
Article# 968, Created May. 14, 2009 :: Last Update: Jun. 11, 2009
Citywide Poet, Reonna Barnes recently received a spontaneous standing ovation after reading her poem "Are You Listening (Turn the World Around)," at the ACLU of Michigan Annual Dinner with Harry Belafonte as keynote speaker. Belefonte was so impressed, he asked Reonna for the poem and slipped it into his pocket. Congratulations Reonna!
Are You Listening (Turn the World Around)
by Reonna Barnes
God's greatest gift is voice.
Have you ever thought someone might be listening to you?
My mother told me to never be bullied into silence,
so I would put my words in glass jars, to see if they would light up at night the way stars do.
No one seemed to pay me any attention.
That fourth grade teacher, who said I would never be a superhero,
she was just blinded by her imagination.
She never gave me a chance to paint hope across her eyelids,
so she could see what I was saying.
I wanted to save the world from itself,
and I would start with my sister,
who uses my voice as braille,
as her fingertips follow the passion in my soul.
She wishes people were named after colors,
so she could remember what they felt like.
That’s probably why she calls me sunshine yellow,
so I’ll call you blue and you purple,
maybe you’ll have a baby who we’ll call rainbow –
and even though it signifies homosexuality, I will stand with my arms open wide letting her know she’s welcome.
Maybe when you look at her at an angle, the leaves will fly upwards,
as if the world had a limp the way a pimp does.
We are all in a state of emergency.
When we see someone shooting to be the sun,
just because others are shaded like the moon, but not only stars glow.
I too can only use what God gave me.
For when the ears of a deaf child can’t hear my voice,
I will take her to a place where eyes can only hear shouts of fingertips, tongues have no volumes.
Are you listening?
I will take you to a place where eyes can only hear shouts of fingertips, tongues have no volumes.
Are you listening?
InsideOut, who gave me a pen and notebook, told me to show emotion.
Are you listening?
Harry Belafonte, I am the world, I am setting a way for the children.
Are you listening?
My fourth grade teacher –
she’s in a state of emergency for not believing that one voice can turn the world around.
I am a superhero, saving the world one poem at a time.
My mother told me to never be bullied into silence.
I make my words fall onto deaf ears,
and my voice seen by blind eyes.
I am changing the world,
this is the only way I know how.
Maybe I will start with those fourth grade teachers.
who don’t believe in superheroes,
‘cause they’re blinded by their imagination,
and deaf to hearing the world change.
Are you listening?
Article# 954, Created Jul. 10, 2008 :: Last Update: Dec. 2, 2008
Fifteen student poems from InsideOut programs have been published in
22 Across: An Anthology of Young Writers. The journal is a publication of Arizona State University's Young Writers Program and available at InsideOut or on the ASU website. Congratulations to students: Lena Cintron, Milland Davis, Courtney Drake, Julian Easterly, Jacquelyne Galloway, Walter Gilbert, Rasheed Halthorn, Andrew Hawkes, Mireya Hernandez, Walter Jones, Merari Mireles, Tenisha Oliver, Rahmal Poe, Breauna Roach, and Napolian Scott.
Article# 944, Created Mar. 13, 2008 :: Last Update: Jun. 4, 2009
