Tag Archives: A Poem as Big as New York City

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A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY is a delightful book-length poem that spreads the wonder and joy that is New York, as told through the words of its young people. Lyrical, heartfelt, and bursting with imagination, A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY proves that a poem can be as vast and exciting as the greatest city in the world.

Check out an early review of the book.

Purchase A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY directly from Rizzoli, New York. Also available from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Find out more about A Poem as Big as New York City here.

FREE poetry workshops this August!

Beat the heat this August!  Attend a FREE T&W poetry workshop at your local NYC library!

With generous support from The Lily Auchincloss Foundation and The Lotos Foundation, T&W is partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Queens Library to offer free poetry workshops based on our 2008 A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY project.

Through this initiative, thousands of young people in NYC schools and community centers took part in workshops in which they wrote poems about their experiences growing up in New York, imagining the city as its own poem character. The poems created were adapted into a single narrative by T&W writer Melanie Maria Goodreaux, A Poem as Big as New York City, which Universe (an imprint of Rizzoli) will publish as a hard-cover, illustrated children’s book in fall 2012. 

Our FREE one-hour poetry workshops will be held in select library branches on the following dates and times during August.  Come pay poetic tribute to our beloved city!

A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY Summer Workshops: Dyker

School has been out for a month but T&W writers are still at work this summer in New York’s public libraries. From Coney Island, Brooklyn, to Castle Hill in the Bronx, poetry workshops based around T&W’s 2008 A POEM AS BIG AS NEW YORK CITY project are fully underway.

As a summer intern for T&W I attended two hour-long workshops led by seasoned T&W playwright and teaching artist Frank Ingrasciotta at the Dyker Library branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Upon my first visit (which was Frank’s first workshop at the library), eight participants, some of whom are part of Dyker branch's "Teen Time," silently waited as Frank wrote his name on the small easel. Blank expressions were their only response. Reaching for the book Alphabet City, Frank told the participants that today they’d be using their spatial-reasoning skills. Alphabet City is an abstract picture book that explores the alphabet by identifying individual letters found in various urban objects. For example, the profile of a wooden-horse forms the letter "A," a fire escape forms the letter "Z," or if you rotate the book, it might be a capital "N." Frank flipped through the book, asking what letters the students could spot. The group was polite and reserved, raising their hands and patiently waiting to be called on to speak. Despite their initial restraint, gasps and smiles broke the silence as the objects became more abstract, and identifying a letter more like revealing a secret.  (more...)

FREE T&W Summer Poetry Workshops in NYC libraries!

T&W is pleased to offer FREE poetry workshops for children and teens this summer!

With generous support from The Lily Auchincloss Foundation and The Lotos Foundation, T&W is partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Queens Library to offer poetry workshops based on our 2008 A Poem as Big as New York City project.

Through this initiative, thousands of young people in NYC schools and community centers took part in workshops in which they wrote poems about their experiences growing up in New York, imagining the city as its own poem character. The poems created were adapted into a single narrative by T&W writer Melanie Maria Goodreaux, A Poem as Big as New York City, which Universe Publishing (an imprint of Rizzoli) will publish as a hard-cover, illustrated children’s book in fall 2012. 

Our FREE one-hour poetry workshops will be held in select library branches on the following dates and times.  Come pay poetic tribute to our beloved city!

In early 2013, T&W will prepare an anthology of poetry created during the branch-based workshops for publication in April 2013—National Poetry Month. We hope to provide copies of the anthology to all program participants, with several copies for each host library branch.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE FREE LIBRARY WORKSHOPS IN THE FALL!