New for the Stories of Arrival Project: A Broadside Project and a New Anthology!
For the eighth year of the Stories of Arrival Poetry Project, Merna and co-director Carrie integrated elements of visual art to generate a broadside project. The result is a stunning collection of broadsides, self-portraits and visual poems that show the deep humanity of each young person in the 2019-2020 project. The intent was to exhibit the broadsides in numerous places to dramatically broaden the community venues for young immigrants and refugees to speak with the power of their own voices. The broadsides are important reminders that we dispel stereotypes and unfair biases when we gain understanding of the struggles, triumphs, and individual and cultural identifies of people different from ourselves.
In early February of 2020, the self-portraits were placed on exhibit at the Tukwila Community Center. The exhibit garnered many positive responses. One of the first to view the exhibit was a south Seattle resident who had arrived in the U.S. from Mexico at the age of five over forty five years ago. She took her time viewing and reading each self-portrait, then said,“I wish people could see these kids and what they’re saying. They come here with so much hope and look at our government and how they are treated. Kids are our future. Hope is being denied them from the top of our government.”
On March 13, 2020 community spaces in WA State were shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the project goal of widespread community exhibitions came to an abrupt end. As of September 2020 Merna was delighted to establish a partnership with the new Tukwila Food Innovation Network Spice Bridge Global Food Hall where the broadsides will be on exhibit well into 2021. Community partnerships with food and garden related projects reflect Merna’s core belief basic to the Stories of arrival project—that poetry and art, like good food, when it is shared, bring us closer to building communities where we find sustenance with each other and learn to live peacefully together nourished on the spices of our food, our cultures, our stories and our shared humanity.
As in past projects it “takes a village” for success which includes continued collaboration with the Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Institute for Poetic Medicine. Richard Rogers designed the self-portraits and followed each student’s detailed directions for integrating their poem into their original art piece. Guest visual artist, Melissa Koch, turned the classroom into an art studio mentoring the poets in creating their broadside paintings and Jenna Riggs designed intricate patterns to enliven the wealth of poetry. David W. Lynch took beautiful portrait photos of each young poet. Also, WA State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna, visited each class and exchanged poems with project participants.
Since the pandemic precluded the initial goal of broad community exhibitions, Merna is editing a book so that this work can be widely seen and shared. The broadside project was not only one of participatory art and poetry making, it was also one of peacemaking, something all in the project agree is much needed in this world. As of January 2021, the book is in print in a limited edition. In the late spring it will come out as a trade book published by Seattle’s Chin Music Press. The title for this beautiful, colorful book of broadsides chosen by the project participants is:
We Are the Future: Poems with A Voice for Peace.
