Poetry Alive! is an arts outreach program that teaches poetry to incarcerated youths. At George Mason, Poetry Alive! members serve the Fairfax County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) and Patrick D. Molinari Juvenile Shelter through interactive workshops centered on contemporary poetry. In its fourth year, Poetry Alive! has expanded into a third site, the Stepping Stones program. So far this school year, Mason’s nine-member Poetry Alive! team has worked with over 50 individual students ranging in age from 13 to 17.
Rowan Stubblebine, MFA candidate, who acts as team lead for the new Stepping Stones site, says of the program: “Our Poetry Alive! group reaches an average of about 10 students each week, though the number varies depending on how many students are at each program session. The lessons teach students how to engage with poetry, as well as to offer students a place to feel secure expressing themselves creatively.”
Poetry Alive! is modeled after the successful pilot initiated in spring 2022 by the inaugural Fairfax Poet Laureate and George Mason alumna Nicole Tong and has continued with the support of funding from ArtsFairfax. The program at the Fairfax County JDC is funded by ArtsFairfax and by generous Poetry Daily donors. Poetry Daily is the independent nonprofit digital literary journal housed within Watershed Lit. Originally, Poetry Daily partnered with Poetry Alive! by donating books of poetry to the program and when Tong's tenure ended as Fairfax County Poet Laureate, the journal committed to stewarding the program.
In addition to its impact on the students at the JDC and the Molinari shelter, the MFA students who serve as teaching fellows receive hands-on vocational training as teaching artists. These teaching fellows mentor each other, sharing lesson plans and pedagogical strategies for creating spaces safe for self-expression for the students. This past year, the program switched from a model organized by George Mason poetry faculty members and to a collective non-hierarchical organization run by the teaching fellows themselves. The teaching fellows gain program management skills by liaising with the program sites’ teachers and administrators, writing grants to fund the program, and creating a training structure to orient new teaching fellows.
Watershed Lit Asssociate Director Alice Magelssen-Green says “The Poetry Alive program is part of the work that Watershed Lit does in providing Mason English students with hands-on experience as literary citizens. Our hope is that the teaching fellows take the teaching and leadership skills they learn in Poetry Alive to whatever communities they land in post-degree. This program has continued to grow because of the dedication and leadership of these students.”
Poetry Alive is made possible in part by ArtsFairfax. Poetry Alive was also supported, in part, by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.