It’s been a joy to work with the students and faculty at PS90 this spring. In this anthology, or “poetry room,” you will find things that delight and surprise you. Unicorns, spring puddles, cats, and flowers, among many other things, are contained inside. You will read poems about spring, Brooklyn, night sounds, mountains, imagined night adventures and the letter O. You will enter a room filled with sensory details, gorgeous imagery, playful language and hard work.
During our time together, we read poetry by Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye, Edward Lear, e.e.cummings, Eve Merriam, Pablo Neruda and Sonia Sanchez, among others. Through literature, we went owling, and on an adventure with the jumblies. We tasted watermelons in a new way. We went to the moon and looked inside of a kaleidoscope. We looked inside of a stone and at daffodils and listened as the rain fell on us. We went to the top of a mountain and discovered, through our imaginations, that a mountain could be as cute as an ice cream cone and as soft as a rabbit’s ears and all sorts of other things! We learned how to look at the world as poets, noticing things that other people might not notice, imagining things that other people might not imagine.
PS90 is a school that truly nurtures creativity and learning. Thank you Ms. Sonco, Ms. Parente, Ms. Fox, Ms. Mendoza, Ms. Sigler, and Ms. Wnek for welcoming me into your classrooms. Thank you Principal Hawkins and Assistant Principal Lynch for making this residency possible. Thank you to all of the paras who add such vital support to the classroom. And of course a big, huge, enormous thank you to the Second Graders of PS90 for the beautiful words you shared with me!
Sincerely,
Amina Henry
Featured Poem
My Mountain Poem
by Marianne P. (2nd grade)I think the mountain is freedom and
love with effort
I think the mountain is a hope for us
Maybe the mountain is God helping us
Or the mountain is a place where happy animals live
On the mountain, there are no sad things
There is hope everywhere!
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.
