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Astoria Elementary School's Budding Poets Pen Ode to Queens

 Fifth graders at P.S. 17 wrote poems to celebrate the borough, through a Community Word Project program.
Community Word Project at P.S. 17 in Astoria
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ASTORIA — It's The World's Borough — and now, it's muse.

A group of fifth graders at Astoria's P.S. 17 are celebrating their home borough by writing their own "Ode to Queens," part of a poetry lesson with a local nonprofit that looks to bring arts education to city schools.

During a class on Monday, the budding bards studied Pablo Neruda's "Ode to the Artichoke" and then worked on crafting their own verses, using the five senses to describe the sights, smells and tastes of Queens.

"Queens tastes like falafel with lots of oil and gyros with chicken," one student wrote.

"It sounds like cars speeding down the road," another penned.

 

Rasheed B., a fifth grader at Astoria's PS 17, reads his poem about Queens during a poetry lesson

A video posted by Jeanmarie Evelly (@jeanmarieevelly) on

The project is part of an art residency with the Community-Word Project, which brings professional writers, artists, actors, dancers and musicians to classrooms across the city to help students connect with their curriculum, creatively.

"Young people really need the time and space to develop critical and creative thinking skills, and the arts is a perfect way for that to happen," said the group's executive director, Michele Kotler.

She founded the Community Word-Project in 1997, at a time when the funding for arts at many city schools was being slashed.

"We just want to make sure that there is a time in a child's day where they can be creative," she said. "Where they can be working on developing their unique voice."

The program at P.S. 17 is being offered through a grant from the Department of Education's Arts Continuum Grant Program and funding from City Councilman Costa Constantinides.

Until May, Community-Word Project will bring two "Teaching Artists" to this class of fifth graders once a week, where they'll lead lessons on poetry, creative writing and theater.

The students — who all hail from Queens — worked on first drafts of their odes to the borough Monday, the final versions of which will be published in a book of their work at the end of the year.

"Queens is the neighbors I see walking through the neighborhood on a regular morning stroll as I head to the car," one 10-year-old poet wrote, while another student's poem conjured the image of "bubbling spicy lamb noodles from Flushing."

 

Georgia R. reads a line from her "Ode to Queens."

A video posted by Jeanmarie Evelly (@jeanmarieevelly) on

"We're giving classroom teachers another way to work with their curriculum," Kotler said. "As well as giving them the opportunity to see kids that might not necessarily shine when doing traditional work."

Kotler, a Queens native who grew up in Jamaica, said she was one of those students herself.

"I was dyslexic and nobody knew it," she said, saying she struggled with reading and "hated" school until the sixth grade, when one of her teachers taught a lesson on haiku using music.

"He taught us differently. He taught us language is music, and each syllable is a beat," she said. "Finally it all came into place, finally language made sense to me."

Kotler hopes her work will have a similar impact on the kids at P.S. 17.

"We want to make school a place where kids want to be, versus where they have to be," she said. "And we believe that the arts plays a great role in that."

 

PS 17 student Nicole R. shares a line from her poem about Queens

A video posted by Jeanmarie Evelly (@jeanmarieevelly) on