As part of the SFUSD city-wide Youth Arts Festival throughout April 2024,
approximately eighty 9th grade students’ poetry/visual art projects were on display at the S.F. State Univ. Fine Arts Bldg., Design Space Gallery. In these artworks, Lowell High School ninth-graders illustrated their own poems, addressing themes of self-exploration, loved ones, social justice, and family history. Poem formats include odes, dramatic narratives, and ekphrastic poems (poems based on works of art). Students utilized a variety of arts media: water color, acrylics, oil pastel, pen, marker, paper collage, and clay.
The students’ exceptionally moving poems and accompanying artwork are the culminating projects from their poetry workshop sessions with Susan Terence, Poet-Teacher with California Poets in the Schools.
The project received funding and support from: the San Francisco Arts Commission, Friends of the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (FOSOTA), the Lowell Alumni Association, and Cal. Poets in the Schools
—Susan Terence, Poetry/Arts Teacher, Cal. Poets in the Schools, (californiapoets.org)