October 10, 2014

Family School Pride Write Your Block Philly

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Here is a great city wide initiative that would put your school on the map. Do you enjoy poetry? Philadelphia Poet Laureate Frank Sherlock and award winning CAConrad took a journey through Philadelphia and mapped their travels with poetry. From their journey came their book “The City Real and Imagined”.

“The City Real and Imagined” is the spark that created “Write Your Block” a platform that gives voice to Philadelphians and their experience as a citizen of Philadelphia.

I attended an orientation Tuesday, October 7th hosted by Frank, Lindsay from the city office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy www.creativephl.org/writeyourblock and Beth from The Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation, http://bartol.org. After learning about the project we took a walk to write a group poem.

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You don’t have to be a professional writer to “Write Your Block”, but to participate you will have to create a tumblr account once you log onto creativephl.org/writeyourblock. Once you created your account you can download the toolkit for various ways to give voice to you and your community. Here is my first submission, being that this initiative ends in April, I plan to write several poems as the seasons change:

wands like time
5am trains and bus lines
manicured Lawns
an island with
three abandon Flower pots
this road may Flood
Squirrels black and gray
fat shiny reddish brown coat
Woodchucks
10 strong Trees
now shedding their leaves
i planted some Echinacea
and Bee Balm
under our Evergreen
rooted with shiny Rocks



Beth also shared with us a cool tool to assist us in writing and planning events. www.cultureblocks.com is a site of our city mapped culture and arts locations. Beth advised us to print whatever you find on the site for you cannot save from the site.

If you would like assistance with “Write Your Block” please email me at aliciadorsey2@gmail.com. I would love to assist you, your school and your community.