Happy #pubdate to teens at Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center for their latest collection of poetry: What I Carry. Throughout Fall 2020 and Summer 2021, teaching artists Jim LaVilla-Havelin and Erica DeLaRosa engaged teens in poetry and creative non-fiction readings that worked as a catalyst toward creating and sharing their own work. The final product was this anthology of teen poetry.

What I Carry is a collection of poems, the result of Gemini Ink’s Partner Classes Program workshops in Fall 2020 and Summer 2021 at the Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center. Here you will find the powerful voices of youth striving, hoping, learning, listening, reaching out, from lives derailed. Hear their words: what they know, what they’ve seen, where they’ve been. And hear where they’re going, what tomorrow holds. Working with poets Erica DeLaRosa and me (Jim LaVilla-Havelin), first via Zoom in the fall of 2020, and then live for nine weeks in the summer 2021, these young writers worked to remember, respond, and shape their voices and their visions.

—from Jim LaVilla-Havelin’s intro.

Download a copy of What I Carry.

This project was made possible by the Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department, the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, HEB, and the Shield-Ayres Foundation. Thank you for your support of teen poetry and publishing!

Anisa Onofre

Author Anisa Onofre

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