Poetry comes alive for some 7th-graders

For the seventh-grade students of River Oaks Middle School, poetry will never be just a few boring rhymes they had to memorize in school.

As part of the city of North Charleston Cultural Arts Program, the seventh-graders were treated to an uproarious performance of live-action poetry by the group Poetry Alive! Many came away knowing that poetry can be anything but dull, according to Julie N. Hornick, the school's library media specialist.

The Cultural Arts Program strives to increase awareness of the arts, and to make arts experiences available for the enjoyment of all residents in the community. All public schools in the city have the opportunity to experience visits from artists in the visual, performing, and literary arts throughout the school year, at no cost to the school.

"The arts are alive and well at River Oaks," Hornick said.

The school is located in North Charleston and in Dorchester County School District 2. The program was established by North Charleston and funded by the city and the S.C. Arts Commission, with help from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Poetry Alive! was chosen for the school by choral teacher Candace MacLeod and the other members of the River Oaks fine arts department in an effort to "get students to think outside the box about poetry." The program also encourages students to express poetry through the use of expression and body movement, Hornick said.

She said MacLeod also hopes to "spark an interest" among the students and faculty for a theater program at the new middle school.

Poems performed by Michelle Brown and Eric Pratt, two members of the Poetry Alive! troupe, ranged from those by Emily Dickinson and E. E. Cummings, to those by noted children's authors Naomi Shihab Nye and Nikki Grimes. Students and teachers were brought up on the stage to participate, performing roles as diverse as basketball players and fleas. The afternoon culminated in a rousing rendition of the classic, "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, with students taking key parts and the audience executing a wave.

Described by a group of students as "boring" and "uninteresting" before the performance poetry "came alive and grabbed us" during the performance, according to student, Nick Cottrell. Another seventh-grader, Roland Otadoy, added that poetry, "seems a lot funnier" now that he has seen Poetry Alive!, Hornick said.

As part of the ongoing cultural program, next month's offerings will include a didgeridoo performance.