The new poetry collection “If I Was a Bird” celebrates teen writers at Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center, produced from a year-long collaboration with the Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department through our Partner Classes Program. Teaching artists Jim LaVilla-Havelin and Erica DeLaRosa worked with the teens throughout 2023, engaging them in poetry and creative non-fiction readings that inspired them to create and share their own work. This anthology of teen poetry is the final product of their collaboration.
Dreams and hopes and aspirations balance with nightmare, trauma, and hopelessness…. These are voices we all need to hear. These are poets who affirm their lives even as they mourn their losses. And if they are, at Krier, “inside just as happy,” as Elijah puts it in his acrostic poem, it may be because someone listens, cares about them, and struggles with them to ready them to go back into their world.
—from Jim LaVilla-Havelin’s intro.
This project was made possible by the Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department and the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture. Thank you for supporting teen poetry and publishing!
