Event Spotlights Budding Novelists

A school gymnasium might seem an odd place for a multimedia poetry slam, but the new gym at was packed Wednesday night as eighth-grade students read and enacted their favorite poems in a show titled "Voices of Transformation."

Linked by stanzas of Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of the Morning" (first read at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration), students interpreted poems by Walt Whitman, Vaclav Havel, Shakespeare and others.

"It's the first time we've ever done anything like this," teacher Janet Barker told the audience. "This whole process has been a great and grand experiment."

The performance was the end result of a two-part project called "The Poetry of Transformation," an innovative, cross-curriculum  program funded by a grant from the Redondo Beach Education Foundation.

Besides reciting the poetry of others, the eighth graders also wrote poetry and books of their own.

After the presentation in the gym, the audience was invited to visit displays set up along the school's corridors, where students displayed their own poetry and novels—more than 280 manuscripts all together.

In addition, some of the eighth graders had prepared marketing materials—posters, bookmarks and stickers—promoting their work.

To showcase his novel Gone, Brandon McDermott designed a cover inspired by the Twilight series, as well as a poster claiming the book was one of President Barack  Obama's favorites.

"I've been writing since I can remember, since kindergarten," said Brandon. "Fiction is my strong point."

Cynthia Bowen said her daughter Kira always loved writing and art.

"She has a hodgepodge of poetry and art, and Runaway Sam is her novel," Bowen said. The project has allowed Kira to combine the subjects she likes best, her mother added.

Not all the students liked the idea of writing—at least not at the beginning—but after spending months polishing their prose, many have changed their minds.

“I’ve found a new passion,” said Camille Gerson. She drew on her parents' deep sea diving experience to write Heart of the Storm, which she describes as a "thrilling dystopian mystery." Now that it's finished, she's got plans for several sequels.

When told he'd have to write a novel, Cole Greenbaum thought immediately of zombies. When he finished Zombie City, which tells how orphan Zachary Pike escapes both the East Hampton Orphanage as well as mobs of zombies, "I was really proud of myself."

Allegra Peelor has always liked to write, but says the assignment helped her hone her skills. As for the poems, another part of the assignment, "I put all my heart and soul into them," she said.

“The Poetry of Transformation” project cut across several subjects, like social studies, science, and language arts, and linked them to the arts.  Kathryn Schwartz, a teaching artist, came to the school as part of a Los Angeles Music Center Educational Division partnership. She helped students to dig into poetry, find the transformative aspects, follow themes into other areas like science, then personalize and interpret the poems.