Harvard Bok Center partnership expands Poetry in America program with high‑profile cultural figures

New Harvard Partner: Bok Center for Teaching and Learning Meanwhile, Poetry in America has deepened its partnership and formulated a plan for growth going forward at Harvard. This fall, Harvard's Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Mike Smith, endorsed the integration and expansion of my public-facing humanities work within the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. As a Bok Fellow this year, and alongside Bok director Rob Lue in the years to come, | will be working to substantially expand Bok's capacity and resources to train humanists in 21st-century methods of public engagement-- developing courses, digital fellowship opportunities and also securing distribution outlets and partners for content produced in Bok by Harvard humanists. By next year at this time, | will be turning some of my attention beyond poetry (my favorite, but hardly the only humanistic mode of communication!) to create a wider base of humanities materials for use in American schools and other institutions. We will begin integrating and anchoring Poetry in America content (on art, sport and play; on the environment; and on health and well being) with content created by others. As | continue to experiment with use of digital media within my residential courses for undergraduates and graduates, | shall also be working with other faculty and graduate students. My work at Bok will also facilitate collaborations between humanists working across the whole university. Projects for 2017 include work with HarvardX on drama and Shakespeare, with Harvard’s Center for the Environment, with the Arts and Humanities Initiative at Harvard Medical School, and with several programs within Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Launching in 2017: Our First Course Designed Specifically for Teachers Verse Video Education has allocated much of its staff time this year to bringing its first course designed specifically to support the American secondary classroom to completion. Poetry in America for Teachers: The City from Whitman to Hip Hop draws on assets created at HarvardX, along with footage captured with our TV partners and independently by Verse Video Education. The resulting course, designed for English, Social Studies, and Arts teachers, as well as for librarians, administrators and others, provides deep content instruction as well as pedagogical training. Common Core aligned, this course, the first of its kind, is now open for enrollment, and will launch January 23rd. We are currently discussing group enrollments with major educational systems and reformers across the nation, and we are also raising scholarship funds for strapped enrollees. Over time, we hope to play a leading role in improving literacy and in strengthening the humanities across the American educational landscape. Airing Nationwide in 2018: Poetry in America, The Television Series In May 2016, Verse Video Education was asked by WGBH and American Public Television to expand its television series in development from 8 to 13 episodes, listed below. The following episodes are entering post-production: On Edward Hirsch’s “Fast Break”: Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol, Shane Battier, Edward Hirsch, and an on-court pick-up basketball chorus filmed at Success Academy Charter School; On W.H. Auden’s “Musee Des Beaux Arts”: Ambassador Samantha Power, David Brooks, Peter Sacks; On Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”: Vice President Joe Biden, Elizabeth Alexander, Angela Duckworth, Kevin Young, and a chorus of fathers and sons; On Carl Sandburg’s “Skyscraper”: Frank Gehry, Robert Polito, and a chorus of Young Student Poets; On Nas’s “New York State of Mind”: Nas, Russell Simmons, Salamishah Tillet, Steve Stoute, and a chorus of hip hop heads; On Galway Kinnell’s “The Grey Heron”: E.O. Wilson, Robert Hass, Laura McPhee; On Gwendolyn Brooks’s “To Prisoners”: Anna Deveare Smith, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Li-Young Lee and a chorus of exonerees from the Innocence Project; On William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say”: Woody Allen, Jane Hirshfield, Rafael Campo and a chorus of couples young and old; On Langston Hughes’s “Harlem”: President Bill Clinton, Herbie Hancock, Sonia Sanchez and a chorus of children from Promise Academy; On Allen Ginsberg’s Hymmnn from “Kaddish” and “Hum Bom”: Bono, Juan Felipe Herrera and a chorus of clergy. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019327