Celebrating with Stanzas: Poetry Inside Out Student Showcase

When justice is served
freedom and fairness blossom
Justice is water
–Emerson Elementary 5th Graders

On Wednesday, January 28th, 3rd and 4th grade students from Emerson Elementary School in North Oakland took the stage to showcase their poems and translations in front of an audience of teachers, parents, grandparents, guardians, and fellow students. The event marked the end of the fall Poetry Inside Out program at Emerson. Poetry Inside Out instructor Tai Rockett served as the master of ceremonies.

In their classes this fall students read and translated poems by haiku masters Matsuo Basho and Mizuta Masahide. One group of 3rd graders eagerly took the stage to act out Basho’s 17-syllable poem about a frog hopping into a pond. Another group recited a Masahide poem in its original Japanese with accompanying stomps and gestures. Tai Rockett said that the students were drawn to the biography of Masahide, who was a samurai as well as a poet. They decided to incorporate samurai techniques into their choreography of his poem in order to capture the poet’s culture and identity (check out the video to see their samurai moves).

Over the course of the presentation students came up to share “Who Am I?” haikus, giving out clues to a flurry of eager hands as their classmates tried to guess the names of the animals that were described. Instead of merely adhering to the haiku’s strict syllable count, several students added similes and metaphors to their poems, playing with language like the great poets they had read and translated.

“After our lesson I continued to use metaphors and similes with the class and have them point out when I did,” Tai told me. “I’d be shooting hoops with the kids during recess, and I’d say ‘Wow, you are quick like a cheetah on the court’ and things like that. Students would chime in, ‘Simile, simile!'”

“If you want the students to feel comfortable using metaphors and similes the lesson has to continue outside the classroom.”

Although some of the students performed alone, most of the presentations were collaborative, reflecting Poetry Inside Out’s emphasis on group work.

Many of the students said they connected personally to the stories they uncovered through translation, including that of Daisy Zamora, the Nicaraguan poet who was exiled from her country before immigrating to San Francisco.

“She looks like me,” one fifth-grader proudly told me, her classmates nodding along.

With these stories in mind, and in conjunction with their unit on Martin Luther King Jr. this month, the students wrote longer poems and, of course, haikus (their favorites!) on justice, freedom, and peace. “Justice is water,” as they put it.

Students received copies of the Poetry Inside Out creative writing workbook at the showcase.