Overview
Dodge Poetry in the Community is a cornerstone of the newly-expanded partnership between the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and NJPAC. The program offers free poetry workshops and performance opportunities for Newark teens ages 13 – 18.
This new initiative will give young Newarkers the chance to hear—outside a traditional classroom—how poetry feeds the narratives that propel social justice movements, and to add their voices to the chorus. The program aims to offer them an opportunity to experience, through reading and writing poems of their own, how joy, empathy, and healing can be intrinsically tied to language and poetry.
Created in partnership with Rutgers Newark’s Creative Writing MFA Program under the direction of professor, poet and critic Rigoberto González, this workshop will be followed by opportunities for participants to read their work during the festival on October 19th and at youth open mic in November. In addition, all workshop participants will be published in a Dodge Poetry in the Community Youth Anthology.
Cohorts of youth poets will pen poems under the guidance of established Newark “Mentor” poets Noel Munguia-Moreno, Kween Moore, and Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal, as well as Rutgers MFA graduate Attorious Renee Augustin.
