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Mumbai Poetry Project

"poem is a verb"

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Mumbai Poetry Project

Mumbai Poetry Project

Mumbai Poetry Project

Mumbai Poetry Project

Mumbai Poetry Project

"poem is a verb"

"poem is a verb"

"poem is a verb"

"poem is a verb"

Jeffrey Baker
Jeffrey Baker
Jeffrey Baker
Jeffrey Baker
1 Campaign |
$3,870 USD 41 backers
110% of $3,500 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
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The Short Version:

Please help bring the Poetry Project to children living in the slums of India. Any amount will be greatly appreciated (so don't be scared off by that big 100 to the right; any number you like fits in the box).


The Long Version:

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Imagination, he well understood, is limitless and “embraces the entire world.”

 

For children living in neglect, poverty, or squalor, whether in the shantytowns of Soweto, South Africa (where I did a four-month poetry workshop with kids in 2007) or the inner-city neighborhoods of Brooklyn (where I did a six-week workshop with 9th-graders in 2009), there can seem to be no room, no hope, for wonder and possibility. But art, and especially poetry, I believe, has the ability to change this. This coming June, I will be heading to India for ten weeks to do a third poetry workshop with children from the slums of Mumbai at the Akanksha Foundation. The children of Akanksha live in challenging conditions, in shacks, with little or no sanitation, in communities marked by illiteracy, sickness, or violence, and many of them would not have the opportunity for a proper education at all were it not for the Foundation. [Visit the gallery to see some pictures of Akanksha and the Soweto workshop.]


In poetry, anything is possible. The moon can speak. A color can dream. The power of beauty and the imagination can say, and make real, the unsayable. In this way, poetry changes our feelings and perceptions of who we are, of where and how we live, and in so doing, it not only embraces the world but transforms it. The Mumbai Poetry Project will help the children of Akanksha expand their creativity, believe in the strength of their own unique voices, and find beauty in places where they could not before. Through poetry, they will learn new ways to explore and express both themselves and their world. Most importantly, however, they will come to understand that they have the power to transform something broken, forsaken, or overlooked into something alive and affirming.

 

To embrace the world one must be given opportunities to discover it. In the workshops, the kids of Akanksha will be reading great poets from not only India and America but also Europe, South America, and Africa. They will also have the opportunity to respond, in poems of their own, to the work of the young poets from Soweto, whose poetry I put into a book entitled The Sound of the Sun, as well as the kids from Brooklyn. By doing this, the Akanksha kids will begin a dialogue through art with children from distant parts of the globe, ultimately seeing that there is more in what connects them than in the distances and disparities which divide them.

 

The closer we get to our goal (or beyond), the more kids we can reach, and the closer we’ll come to seeing The Sound of the Sun achieve its ultimate aim. The long-term goal of these poetry workshops has been to have a book of the kids’ work, whether an expanded version of The Sound of the Sun or a second volume devoted to Mumbai, donate money through sales to an international youth charity like Youth Aids. For the kids to see their own art, their own voices, contribute in some way to the welfare of children both at home and abroad would be profound and empowering. All the money raised here will first go to covering expenses for the workshops. Anything raised beyond that amount will be put toward the production costs of the book of kids’ poems planned for the fall.

 

To learn more about the Soweto workshops, read some of the kids’ poems, see pictures, or read an article about my experience there, please visit: http://sawubonapoetry.wordpress.com/.

 

To learn more about the Akanksha Foundation, please visit: http://akanksha.org/ or watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dprytP4njP4.

 

Thank you for your support.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jeffrey Baker

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