The Binghamton Poetry Project hosted an evening of poetry readings on Friday to celebrate the accomplishments and works of its participants.
The event showcased the work of five children, five teenagers from the Boys and Girls Club in Binghamton and adults from the Binghamton area. Roughly 60 people attended.
According to Nicole Santalucia, founder of the program and a graduate student studying creative writing, the Binghamton Poetry Project (BPP) is a literary outreach program that teaches people to read and write creatively.
BPP is sponsored by the Binghamton Center for Writers and supported financially by the Binghamton University English department, the Broome County Arts Council United Cultural Fund, The Stephen David Ross University and Community Projects Fund, the Binghamton University Foundation and the Harpur College Dean’s Office. The poems shared at the event were the culmination of weeks of participation at the free workshops organized by Santalucia.
“A year ago in the spring I started to reach out to the Broome County Library and formed a relationship with them [over] the summer,” Santalucia said. “I got my colleagues involved with teaching with me. So I do all of the grant writing, all of the relationships with the community, like organizations to get things set up and then I get my colleagues, who are talented poets and instructors, to go in and help me lead the workshops.”
People of all ages and with various levels of poetry knowledge could attend the workshops, which took place once a week for five weeks. The workshop leaders incorporated writing prompts, reading and interpreting poems, crafting poems and learning about formal poetic techniques into their lesson plans.
According to Santalucia, BPP benefits marginalized children, teens and women in Broome County.
“[It offers] them a structured creative outlet, the opportunity to create art, a sense of artistic integrity, as well as an opportunity to gain a better understanding of what poetry is and how it benefits cultures,” Santalucia said.
Prior to reading their poems, some of the participants explained the personal significance behind their works. Michael Modica, an adult reader and former Broome Community College student, said he was inspired to write more frequently by the poetry club.
“It just started coming out every week,” Modica said. “I’m going through a lot of trauma — post-traumatic stress. So it’s just been very helpful for me. It keeps me busy.”
Dante DiStefano, an English teacher at Union-Endicott High School and one of the workshop leaders, agreed with the positive sentiments about BPP.
“[Through BPP] you get to meet great people, like Mike and Melanie, you wouldn’t otherwise get to meet, and just talk about poetry, which we’re all very passionate about, and some of the people in the workshop are just starting out with poetry, some people have been writing it for years and haven’t had an outlet to investigate it further — so you have people from all levels,” DiStefano said. ”You have people that are very young, people that are high school students, little kids.”
DiStefano acknowledged the impact BPP has had not just creatively, but socially.
“We have all this stuff with the campus being separated from the community — this is one of those efforts to bring those two worlds together and you can see what the fruits of it are here,” DiStefano said.
— Jesse McCormick contributed to this report.
Correction: Dec. 4, 2012
An earlier version of the photo caption accompanying this article incorrectly identified the reader in the photo. He is Festus Ngaruka, not Joe Montalbo.
Clarification: Dec. 6, 2012
An earlier version of this article failed to identify all of the funding sources of the Binghamton Poetry Project. The Binghamton University English department, the Broome County Arts Council United Cultural Fund, The Stephen David Ross University and Community Projects Fund, the Binghamton University Foundation and the Harpur College Dean’s Office all support the project financially.