Giving Kids a Voice
Expanding Literacy: Professor Carmen Tafolla is taking poetry to students through her Planting Poet Trees project
By Michelle Mondo
Her time as Texas鈥� poet laureate may be winding down, but UTSA professor and internationally acclaimed writer Carmen Tafolla certainly is not. Since the legislature announced the honor, Tafolla has thrown herself into Poet Trees鈥攁 project she created and developed to help students at low-income schools get exposed to poetry. Through an application process, Tafolla chose 20 schools to visit statewide. She will take books for the libraries and help students write their own poetry that will then be published in an anthology. She talked to Sombrilla Magazine about the project, when she was first exposed to poetry, what she wants to accomplish, and how students can find their voice.
How did the idea for Poet Trees develop?
We鈥檙e lamenting how our kids aren鈥檛 reading and aren鈥檛 doing well in school. But we have to give them something that lets them make the connection between their world and what they read in school. I wanted to find school districts where some teacher, librarian, or principal is interested in creating writers. I wanted them to be from the schools that don鈥檛 get the extras.
Why do you think poetry is so important to young students?
Poetry will always be relevant. Poetry is based on feelings. Every human being has feelings鈥攍oneliness, insecurity, love, passion. There鈥檚 a great quote form E.E. Cummings: 鈥淧oetry is what you feel. Whenever you feel, you are nobody but yourself.鈥� Poetry is putting that 鈥渘obody but yourself鈥� on paper. I think kids turn a lot to poetry if they are exposed to it correctly. Some never see their own experience. When they hit a poem or a book that expresses something they鈥檝e gone through, that kind of affirmation is critical to children relating to books
You became inspired by poetry at a young age too but not through school. When was your first exposure to poetry and why did it mean so much?
I was born and raised on San Antonio鈥檚 west side. In the late 1950s, when I was 6 years old, my mother ordered a Childcraft Encyclopedia set for me. She had to pay 50 cents a month on a payment plan, which was a lot then for us. The first volume we received was Poems of Early Childhood. I read it backward and forward.
There was also poetry I never saw written down. These were poems that I learned when put on an aunt鈥檚 lap and taught line by line to say words I didn鈥檛 understand the meaning of. I was learning our cultural traditions, family history. It鈥檚 an important part of our heritage. My relatives wanted me to learn my languages. I never considered myself to have one native language. I have two, sometimes three鈥擲panish and English and Tex Mex. They consciously knew they weren鈥檛 passing on education but an ability to use words effectively
When did your poetry become part of your voice?
My writing was something I did privately. When I went to school it was against state law to speak a foreign language on school grounds. Basically, all of the children spoke Spanish, and usually the teacher didn鈥檛 speak anything but English. We were punished for speaking Spanish. There were all kinds of punishments. By the time I got to college, the thing that fascinated me most was bilingual education, and that is what I studied. In my early 20s, after graduating, the Chicano movement was happening publicly. I got a job teaching Mexican American studies at a nearby college. That was when I really became immersed in the Chicano poetry.
What impact do you hope this project has?
Language and expression of emotion are a basic human right. When we silence children鈥檚 tongues or we silence entire groups of people鈥攂e it through exclusion in the educational system or convincing them they have nothing to say鈥攚e are stealing a voice, we are stealing a history and stealing belief in themselves. I would like to make sure that at least some of the children in this state who are unaware of their own voice have a chance to develop it and go on and influence other children.