Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LXVII)

CEC, a program of the alternative high school superintendency, began in 1988. It provided public school classrooms in sites like the Martinique Hotel and Saratoga Interfaith Family Inn, established by Homes for the Homeless near JFK airport in Queens.

The Waterways poetry program visited CEC sites, bringing copies of Ten Penny Players’ other alternative school site based publications and the Streams anthologies. Students at each site contributed writing for their site based publications. The Saratoga published a magazine called the Saratoga Posse and Damon Ransom contributed a poem he wrote about Streams:

All of our emotions

Go into Streams

All of it’s told

All of it’s seen

The stream of life

The stream of thought

The stream of poetry

Can’t be bought

In a store

Or on the shelf

Reach for it deeply

And you will find

It in yourself

The harmony of it

And the power it holds

Don’t fight the power

Be bold

Just grasp the light

So pretty and green

Open your hand and see

You’ve reached the stream

In 1990 Waterways visited with teachers and students at the District 75 Learning Center at Goldwater Memorial Hospital, New York’s largest long-term residential care hospital located on Roosevelt Island, where staff and students felt isolated from the rest of the city. Waterways’ writing program became part of their classroom experience; and out of that experience Ten Penny Players published a series of magazines called The Islanders. S.S. Vasaw mentioned the publication in his poem Lights of the Learning Center:

They became the special lights

of the Learning Center

of Goldwater,

when their thoughts of expressions--

words and verses

of their experiences and activities

became a reality

by the “Islander”

so as to grow as the

best world of creativity

where they share

all their sentiments

which will touch

the heart of millions.

Ten Penny Players reached out to isolated children and adolescents through the small press publishing program, publishing persons who have found themselves outside of the mainstream of society. Their expressive writing and graphic art have articulated their aspirations and frustrations.

The hopes and fears of urban children and young adults were presented in hand assembled small press publications and Streams. The books were available to readers through schools and neighborhood branches of the New York Public Library, a true treasure and a most effective means to reach out to the citizens. It is our belief that the poems and expressive writing furthered mutual understanding among many New Yorkers from different backgrounds.

The Saratoga Posse 2

D75 The Islanders Winter, 1991