Guest blogger Anna Ferdinand, high school teacher and SRPF board member, reflects on a recent training offered by The Pongo Teen Writing Project in La Conner through the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. The Pongo Teen Writing Project teaches and mentors personal poetry by youth who have suffered childhood traumas, such as abuse, neglect, and exposure to violence.
The evening before attending the daylong Pongo training put on by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, I went and saw the movie Moonlight. It is a beautiful film by director and screen writer Barry Jenkins adapted from an original play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, winner of the MacArthur Genius award. The story centers around a young African American boy living in the Liberty Square neighborhood of Miami, first of the southern housing projects and a microcosm of t