In his famous poem “Like You,” Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton wrote, “I believe the world is beautiful/and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.” This workshop will demonstrate how poetry is for everyone and that through poetry our students’ lives—the “landscape and bread” of their homes, their ancestors, their struggles, and joys—are invited into classrooms as subjects worthy of study. Students’ histories as members of a particular race, class, neighborhood, or even illness become part of our classroom anthology. During this workshop, participants will reclaim any part of our lives that society has degraded, humiliated, or shamed, and raise it up, share it, and sing praises to that “unanimous blood/of those who struggle.”
