Poetry in America project overview and donor acknowledgment

Whether you donated to Poetry in America through Filmmaker’s Collaborative (our 501c3 fiscal sponsor), through Harvard, or through WGBH; whether you appeared on camera or talked an elusive friend into appearing on camera to discuss a poem; whether you lent us your film crew, or provided overnight use of your hotel suite or apartment or of your whole skyscraper; whether you highlighted our work on your stage, or talked your colleagues into becoming corporate sponsors; whether you flew to Boston to install state-of-the-art editing and video storage equipment, or asked your children’s school to let us film there; whether you encouraged your family foundation to take an interest in the project, or gave us a lesson in IP, in licensing, in the rudiments of finance, or of distribution; whether you praised, or gave timely, much-needed criticism— you enabled what we have done. Here’s what we have to report, and to show, a year later, thanks to your help. Links offer sneak peeks of works -in-progress across the full portfolio of Poetry in America projects. e The first eight-episode season of the public television series Poetry in America (a co- production between WGBH, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, and my own new production company, Verse Video), is now fully funded and in production, with episodes featuring Bill Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Sonia Sanchez _on Langston Hughes, Frank Gehry on Carl Sandburg, Katie Couric on Elizabeth Bishop, Nas on Whitman, and many more scheduled for nationwide launch in 2017. ¢« Poetry in America’s many initiatives to reach Middle and High School teachers and their students are taking root. Our first online course for Middle and High School Teachers, Poetry of the City, will launch this Spring with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Companion materials to this course will be made available for free on PBS LearningMedia. This course is designed to meet the needs of English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers in the US and internationally. e« Weare eager to begin production of The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky. Designed, too, for Middle and High School teachers, The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky will draw English Language Arts instruction into dialogue with science, and will include extraordinary footage of the natural world, conversations with poets, scholars, and scientists as well as footage shot in class and in the field with great teachers. e Arecent partnership with Greenwich Country Day School and the Success Academy Network of charter schools will provide a base for the production of a new collection of classroom-ready educational material on The Poetry of Art, Sport, and Play. This collection will include discussions on poems filmed everywhere from sports fields to Broadway theaters, and will feature dancers, athletes, fashion designers, and more. e With a growing archive of footage capturing teachers and students reading American poems, we are eager to expand our reach and move into America’s schools, disseminating, testing, and learning from teachers and students using our materials. We hope to be able to begin work evaluating the impact of poetry on literacy levels and character development and, eventually, to produce a full suite of materials that foster character development along with intellectual growth. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029247