Learnedsofar A Bad Seed?
What I've Learned So Far...
Who'd have thought good crops
Could come from a bad seed?
It was a pretty good line in a really good poem, entitled "Look At Me," by a seventeen year old African-American poet named Donald. This young man was theoretically every bit as dangerous as he was gifted; he was incarcerated in the WJ Maxey Boys Training School as a violent offender.
I was working with Donald on a documentary called "Young Poet Incarcerated," helping him polish some of his work and rehearse it before we rolled the camera. We had been given some money by the National Endowment for the Arts through the Michigan Humanities Council and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs to cover some of the costs of making our movie.
The idea of the film was to let Donald use his poetry to give the world a glimpse into how a kid gets himself locked up before he's old enough to vote.
If you enjoy What I've Learned So Far... and would like to see it in your local paper, just send the editor an impassioned plea and this link to my syndicate, North Star Writers Group.
Also, chase all your friends on over to my Web site to sign up, so they can enjoy it too! They'll thank you, and so will I.
- mike
Mike Ball
Author of What I've Learned So Far...
Winner of the 2003 Erma Bombeck Award
Web: whativelearnedsofar.com
E-mail: mike@whativelearnedsofar.com
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posted by Mike Ball @ 10:46 AM
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