It has been a real treat to work with the Louis Armstrong Middle School this year. During this five-week residency, I decided to focus on the basic goal of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative—exercising the imagination. Yes, we used time-tested effective poetic devices like simile, metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, and repetition. We re-visited the five senses and how one might utilize them to create dynamic imagery in a poem. But perhaps more importantly, we focused on seeing the world around us in a fresh, creative and exciting way; we also explored ourselves in new ways. We wondered what it would be like to be animals or to go inside of various objects. We felt spring through our fingers, feeling it, sniffing it, hearing it, tasting it, and seeing it from an ice-cream fresh perspective. We twisted letters with our imaginations, turning them into things like mountains, snakes, mice, chairs and half-hearts. We acknowledged the diversity inside of us, considering all of the elements that make us unique individuals. We also experienced poetry together from poets such as e.e. cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rainer Maria Rilke, Charles Simic, and May Swenson.
Thank you to the students, the teachers, and the teaching assistants who helped generate this work. I loved being in your classrooms and experiencing your diversity, your exuberance, your curiosity and ultimately, the poetry you were brave enough to put on the page and share with the world.
Amina Henry
Teaching Artist
Featured Poems:
Who Are You, Big E?
by Sophie (6th grade)Once tall
And bold
Now cut in half
And fallen
On the fresh burned ground
They pass by you and into
Your fallen remains
No longer will you stand
No longer will you sway
Not now, not ever
Now swept away
The Lonely Mountain V
by Nadia (6th grade)The lonely mountain stands there
All she wants is a companion
She dreams of having a little mountain by
her side
She says, “Come over, little mountain!”
The lonely mountain feels upside down
The lonely mountain stands there
Waiting
Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright and educator. Recent local productions include PS (Ars Nova), Little Rapes (The New Group/Long Island University), and The Johnsons (JACK). Her work has been produced, developed by, and/or presented by: Atlantic Theatre, The New Group, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Flea, Page 73, Project Y Theatre, National Black Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Generator, The Brick, HERE Arts Center, The Cell: a 21st Century Salon, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 2013 Black Swan Lab Series (Ashland, OR), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX), and HERO Theatre (Los Angeles, CA), among other organizations. She was a 2017-18 recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Space Residency and is a 2018 recipient of a space residency at Dixon Place. She is a member of the Women's Project 2022-24 Lab and an affiliate artist at New Georges. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College and SUNY Albany. She is also a teaching artist for Teachers & Writers Collaborative and the Hunts Point Alliance for Children.
