Tell the World: Teen Poems from WritersCorps

by WritersCorps

Overview

Through poetry we tell the world who we are, where we're from, what we love, what we think, how we feel, and why we hope.

With a foreword by hip-hop artist and celebrated urban poet Common, Tell the World is a stunning collection of poems by teens who have taken part in workshops run by WritersCorps, a national alliance of literary arts programs for youth.

Their words represent the thoughts, hopes, and dreams of teens everywhere, offering both insight and empathy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061345043
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/14/2008
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Writers Corps was founded in 1994 in three American urban centers—San Francisco, California, Washington, D.C., and the Bronx, New York—with a mission to transform lives through the written word. Since its inception, the organization has helped forty thousand children and teenagers improve their writing skills and express their ideas and experiences. WritersCorps has published two collections of teen poems with HarperTeen: Paint Me Like I Am and Tell the World.

Read an Excerpt

Tell the World

Tell the World Who We Are

Who are you? Are you the child of the city you live in or the country you come from? Are you as steady as the beat of the music you love, as surprising as a bright flash of lightning, or as soothing as the sound of your grandmother's songs? Write a poem that shows through images that compare—metaphors and similes—who you are.

Tell the World. Copyright (c) by . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

All the poems in this collection are gathered from literacy workshops run by WritersCorps, which teach students, often from schools in poor neighborhoods, how to use poetry to write about their lives. Again one sees the benefit of writing as a way of defining and mastering and clarifying. These kids are using the verse form, stripped bare, to communicate, using the silences and emphases of a single line on the page to get through the tangle of an emotion.
—The New York Times

Katie Roiphe

Gr 7 Up

This worthy collection of brief poems offers an array of teen voices, all participants in WritersCorps workshops in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Ngoc Minh Nguyen's "Homesickness" is particularly strong: "Let me become wind/to fly with the kite of childhood." Other poems capture a slice of teenage life, such as riding the bus to ballet class in Annie Yu's "Saturdays" and Kenneth Mozee, Jr.'s "Summer," which evokes the quicksilver delights of the season. Some dazzle through stark simplicity, such as Jaquan Clements's "Middle-School Haiku" and Sarah Verghese's "Questions Beyond Answers." The raw emotion expressed in Shekuanzie Dorch's "Struggles on Living in a Shelter" makes an indelible impression. An essay by WritersCorps teacher Michelle Matz adds a vivid picture of her students and their lives. This fine collection should inspire creativity and resonate with teens who find their own hopes, fears, and dreams eloquently voiced in the works of these young poets.-Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

This collection of poems from urban teens shows a wide range of life experiences and worldviews. Participants in the WritersCorps program are asked to "tell the world" where they're from, what they love, why they hope and so forth, answering questions that lead to poems that explain their thoughts and feelings. They write about family, politics, their heritage, love and many other topics that affect all teens, not just those in urban areas. All of the poems are written with passion, but their maturity level, fluency and ability to convey the writer's ideas without resorting to cheap emotional manipulation vary. As in many collections of teen writing, the poems are mostly ordinary, written with good intentions but an obvious lack of experience. Included in some chapters are essays from WritersCorps teachers that chronicle their journeys as readers and writers and what it's like to be a part of the organization. Although the poems aren't Shakespeare, teens who are assigned to read poetry or have an interest in creating it may want to see their peers' approaches. (Poetry anthology. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews