Secondary Literary Workshops exhibition

Secondary Literary Workshops exhibition

Students dare to open up and discover grace — expressing thoughts, aims, fears and feelings through words, writing and illustrating poetry!

 

Their creativity was fueled by the works of great artistic minds and guided by Profª. Ximena Sandro.

To face the assignments at the Literary Workshops, students from 3rd grade Secondary, in the framework of their bilingual curriculum, had to read poetry, ask themselves very important questions -like “Who am I?” or “What is hope?”-, dig into their own minds and souls, process what they found and land its essence on paper, while searching for the right words and graphic design to embrace them.

Congratulations to teacher and students for such outstanding, remarkable results.

Inspired by:

Maya Angelou

Still I Rise

By Maya Angelou

 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

 

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

 

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

 

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

 

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

 

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

 

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

 

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Emily Dickinson

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

By Emily Dickinson

 

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

 

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

By Emily Dickinson

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

 

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Sylvia Plath

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery -air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy”.

 

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

 

The silence depressed me. It wasn´t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

 

I shut my eyes and all of the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

 

I took a deep breath amd listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

 

Sylvia Plath

 

Walt Whitman

O Me! O Life!

By Walt Whitman

 

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

 

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.