Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XXII)

“When old and familiar things are made new in experience, there is imagination. When the new is created, the far and strange become the most natural inevitable things in the world. There is always some measure of adventure in the meeting of mind and universe, and this adventure is, in its measure, imagination.”

John Dewey, Art as Experience

“Though fashion may imitate the tone of innovation and exploit the myth of its value, the aim of fashion is standardization the goal of fashion’s creators is a successful formula. The avant-garde artist, by contrast, is interested in discovery and self-transcendence.”

Richard Kostelanetz, The Avant Garde Tradition in Literature

Nurturing transformative creative experiences, since 1979 Ten Penny Players has published expressive writing by students from New York City’s five boroughs in magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks. Often the books provide the inspiration that propels the student beyond constant mimesis or repetition of what was done before. Developing new audiences for poetry, the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players made books available for free to students. The costs of publication were covered by contributions from schools and foundations. Ten Penny's co-directors, their friends and family also contributed funds and labor to sustain the work.

Ten Penny Player’s mission is to engage and include communities in creative experiences. Many students, who had been ignored by the public schools, were published in, and reading Streams and other Waterways publications. Students, who had never written in class, asked their teachers why they weren’t included in the books. The voices they read were familiar. Reading peer writing motivated the reluctant learners.

Beginning in the early 1990’s, students in Alternative Programs (VTC, OES, CEC, Island Academy, Brooklyn Literacy Center, and West Side High School) participating in Learn and Serve America, discussed and wrote about their service experiences in reflection periods where they read what their peers published in Waterways chapbooks and anthologies. Waterways facilitated the sharing of individual experiences, observations, and hopes through reading, writing, and publishing poems.

In his poem, “Endure the Beginning of Terror Which Leads to Beauty,” Ephraim wrote:

For I am terrified, but goodness sets its place