After I received my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from SDSU 1n 1992, I began looking for a way to work in North County where I was born.

For a year and a half I worked as a bartender/part-time professor/freelance journalist. Bartending paid the best, and, technically, I was working in the community.

Then in the spring of 1993, Janice Tolman, the area coordinator of California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) was looking for creative writing specialists to teach poetry in schools K-12. I attended a meeting at Janice's home in La Mesa, and there in the backyard were SDSU MFA alumni Glory Foster, Tamara Johnson, Joe Milosch and Mary Williams. The idea of teaching what I had studied appealed to me, so I gave a teaching demonstration for a GATE class at La Jolla High and became CPITS "poet-teacher." 

Later, Janice introduced me to Jack Webb, an assistant news editor at the Union-Tribune newspaper. Jack is a soft-spoken man with an affection for metered poetry, ping-pong and cigarettes. Before I quit my job as bartender, Jack would meet me after my shift at the tavern where I worked. He’d trounce me at ping-pong while I listened to his plans for poetry project using poets from CPITS.

"Poetry is a way of retaining and appreciating our humanity," Jack had written into one of the grants. But did society really want children in schools learning to write like Czeslaw Milosz or Joy Harjo? I knew I did, but what about those folks down the street? The current emphasis on "basics" seems to have as its goal a graduating class smart enough to write the technical manual for a smart bomb, but not necessarily thinking about whether or not to use it. At the very least, today's students should be able to read the instructions on a deep fryer. There are jobs waiting for people who can do that much.

But what could you do with poetry?

People Sparkle

Star brightening my eyes as
it changes sliver blue,
trying to reach its own wish,
as if it wanted to talk
and do wonderful things like us.

I watch the star looking down at us
trying to do what we do.

Connie Garcia
Sixth Grade
Pauma School, Pauma Valley

Connie’s short poem was written in a CPITS workshop in which we talked about how poets animated otherwise inanimate objects. One of the goals of the lesson was to show how language can go beyond the limitations of the physical world. Connie’s poem literally leaves the planet while simultaneously reaffirming our humanity.

When Jack first began the program, his idea was "to develop a sense of community among school age children by integrating them into a partnership of poets and art patrons." The key element here seemed to be bringing the Union-Tribune's massive communications resources to the aid of CPITS who had placed poets in schools since 1964. By the time CPITS co-sponsored the first Border Voices poetry fair in 1994, the program had been in 40 schools county-wide. Today, CPITS is in 140 county schools.

The anthology is released at a poetry fair every spring in Balboa Park. Students, parents, teachers and poets fill the park and listen to each other. It is a time for the community from San Ysidro to Palomar Mountain to enjoy a year of crafting poems. It’s a time for students to see the connection between their writing and and what internationally-known poets are doing. In 1997, the Border Voices Poetry Fair co-sponsored by CPITS will continue to present contemporary poets to San Diego County students. On the bill are U.S.poet-laureate Robert Haas, Sandra Cisneros, Le Thuy, City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlingghetti, and June Jordan. Usually the visiting poets are in the audiences listening at the student readings.

"Contemporary poetry can be dynamic in the classroom provided it’s not chained," Jack told me recently as he looked back on what the program has done. What began as a chance to put a few under-employed teachers to work has grown beyond the literacy program Webb originally had in mind. A GATE student told Jack that she had been bored with much of the school’s curriculum until a CPITS poet-teacher visited her classroom. Until studying contemporary poetry, the student had been taught that "all writing of significance was completed fifty years ago." With CPITS, however, grade-school students end up better read in contemporary poetry than most of the college students I meet.

At a recent poetry fair, a student at risk with gangs won an award. As he accepted it, he told Jack, "I’ll be back next year." A teacher who has had many gang members in her classes said, "He’s changing. Most gang members don’t think that far ahead."