NEWS FROM JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER
Market Arcade 617 Main Sreet, Suite 202A Buffalo, New York 14203
Spring
2011
education program update
Writing with Light and Melons
Did you know? Just Buffalo’s education programs have been partnering with teachers and students throughout Western New York for over 25 years
by Sherry Robbins Sitting around Joan Murray’s living room in 1982, planning this new thing called Writers-in-Education, none of us imagined the thousands of young people we would meet through the years. We were only concerned with our first residencies: what to say, when to say it, how to fill 45 minutes, what to do if… Big Night is Just Buffalo Literary Center’s monthly series that puts poetry in conversation with other art forms. Held at the Western New York Book Arts Center, it features younger and mid-career poets from around the country performing alongside local artists, filmmakers, musicians and a professional chef who creates a themed feast for each event. Information about Big Night, and all of the literary events going on around town can be found at www.justbuffalo.org.
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The students taught us, of course, and all these years later they still surprise even the most veteran teaching artists with the power of their words. There are stories of love declared, of abuse exposed, of muteness overcome. Some of the most powerful poems came from those just learning the language. At Grover Cleveland High School and at Buffalo International School #45, I met young people newly landed here from every possible situation. There was the Kurdish teen whose village had been annihilated, the Somali girl who had seen her grandmother killed by a crocodile, the Bosnian boy whose only English word, doubled, was “bang bang,” the Russian girl whose poem to her mother was recited at the Albright-Knox on Mother’s Day. They each used poetry to make their lives and stories vivid, to introduce themselves to their new home
and to each other. Over and over, I saw them helping each other to express themselves in this new language, and to make that language richer with rhythms and images from their own cultures. One girl in particular sticks in my mind. She had spent half of her young life in refugee camps before completing the long journey from Vietnam. She was very small and very shy, but when asked to describe herself in metaphor, her resilient sweetness found just the right words in poetry. “My heart,” she wrote, “is a watermelon/growing in the night.” We really did not have to worry about what to say, all those years ago. A word here, a word there, the time and silence needed to write. Our job was and is not to talk, but to listen. Sherry Robbins is a poet and free-lance writer who has been conducting creative writing workshops throughout New York State and abroad for over thirty years, working with hundreds of students each year. In 2005, Sherry was named the New York State Teaching Artist of the Year by the Association of Teaching Artists. The arts-ineducation consultant for the University of Coimbra in Portugal and for Portugal’s Belgais Center for the Study of Arts, Sherry has two books of poetry, “Snapshots of Paradise” and “Or, the Whale” (BlazeVOX Books, 2010).
Each year, Just Buffalo’s team of teaching artists bring creative writing to more than 2,000 students In 2007, we teamed up with our collaborators, CEPA Gallery, to form Writing with Light—igniting imaginations through writing and photography The New York State Council on the Arts has recognized Writing with Light—for the past two consecutive years—as New York State’s top arts education initiative. To learn more, visit:
www.writingwithlightbuffalo.org